


Dragon Kin

by Evil_is_Relative



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Angst, Daedric Princes, Family Issues, Humor, Thalmor, impending doom, long fic, updated in spurts, usually a couple of chapters posted at a time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2018-05-17 12:54:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 79,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5870437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evil_is_Relative/pseuds/Evil_is_Relative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ysmir has completed all the prophesies for the Last Dragonborn. She's made many enemies along the way, but found the family she never thought to have. Now it seems that she might not be the Last Dragonborn after all, for she has found another in her daughter. Now Ysmir must protect her child from those who would use her for their own ends, and discover if Alduin truly was defeated. Even if that means crossing bridges she already burned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lakeview Manor

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very long story. You've been warned.

                She was the last of her kind, a dragon born in the body of a mortal; the first such since Tiber Septim himself. The Greybeards had dubbed her Ysmir, the “Dragon of the North,” a name she still went by, forsaking the name she had been born with along with her criminal past in Cyrodiil. Alduin the World Eater had called her the Last Dragonborn, as had the First Dragonborn, Miraak. She had completed the destiny foretold for the last of her kind.

                So how the hell had her five-year-old just _thu’um_ ed her older brother into cleaning her room?

                “Darva,” she said cautiously, looking down at the tiny form perched on a barrel in the girls’ room, kicking her feet. “What did you just say?”

                _“Gol Hah,”_ she said happily, sucking contentedly on a stick that had, not very long ago, held a honey-nut treat. Her violet eyes were the mirror of her mother’s, as were her cupid-bow’s lips and short, straight little nose. Her hair came from her father. “If I say ‘ _Gol Hah’_ , Blaise starts doing whatever I want. He never does what I want when I say ‘please,’ so ‘ _Gol Hah’_ is better.”

                Ysmir groaned, rubbing her eyes with her hand and turning the gesture into sweeping her long red hair off her face. It wasn’t hard to resist the weak, untrained _thu’um_ , even repeated several times, but this certainly wasn’t something she was expecting to do today. “Darva, that is a dirty word. It is on your list of no-no words from this moment on.”

                The little girl’s face fell, making her look heartrendingly pitiful inside a frame of perfect golden curls. “But it’s fun.”

                “Go practice on the dummy with Runa,” Ysmir commanded, using her “no-nonsense” voice. Darva pouted and hopped down, scampering off toward the latched door to the basement. “And don’t run with a stick in your mouth!” Ysmir shouted after her. She sighed, watching her youngest (and only biological) child disappear into the main room with barely a hand raised in acknowledgement. After a moment, she shook her head and walked over to Blaise, bending down to peer into his face and gauge how bad it was. “Blaise,” she said, “Blaise!” adding more force the second time and reaching out to shake his shoulder. “Ah, hag’s tits. _Gol Hah_ ,” she muttered, and the boy blinked owlishly up at her. Well, if he was going to be mind-controlled for a while, it might as well be to do something he was actually _supposed_ to be doing. “Go do your own chores,” she instructed, because she knew very well that he hadn’t gotten around to them yet.

                Blaise dropped the doll he had been holding and walked woodenly out the door. With a sigh, Ysmir sank onto Lucia’s bed, scooping up the doll and smoothing the woolen hair back. One of Sofie’s, it had a half-constructed dress on, pins still holding parts not yet sewn. Some of her own clothing looked a bit like that, thanks to the crafty girl and her penchant for leaving things half-constructed.

                “Ysmir?”

                She jumped, and then smiled, rising to go out to the main room where Farkas was gazing about, tracking mud on her floor. She frowned down at his boots and he grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. I just saw Blaise go upstairs but he didn’t talk to me or seem to see me. I think he might be getting sick or something.”

                “It’s the latter,” she sighed, and when he still looked confused, added. “The ‘or something.’”

                “House has gotten bigger,” he remarked, coming over and giving her a hug redolent of man sweat and dog. Precious—the grouchy old ice wolf that had inexplicably followed Lucia home one day—sniffed his backside and sneezed.

                “Yeah, who says you can’t have four towers on a house anyway?” she said facetiously, wrinkling her nose as the ice wolf gave the man a disgusted look and trotted off. “I don’t know if he told you, but your brother and I finished adding that bathing room off the basement. I think you should visit, soon. But don’t take your clothes off until you get there; the girls are downstairs.”

                Farkas stepped back and lifted his arm, sniffing an armpit. “Ah,” he said, heading upstairs to the main bedroom to grab some clothes. Ysmir shook her head, smiling slightly, and turned to the door, giving the other twin a wave.

                Vilkas wasn’t looking at her. His head was tilted back, eyes narrowed as he sniffed the air. “Sulfur,” he noted.

                “Could be either from when Runa was teaching Lydia how to cook, or from when Blaise and Alesan found my lock picks and got into the Alchemy lab. Hence, new tower. The old Alchemy lab is now unfit for anything but staying empty with the windows wide, wide open.” She sauntered over, grinning as he finally took notice. Farkas was easy to lure into bed; Vilkas needed to be reminded that he had a libido sometimes, depending on what was on his mind. “You two were gone awhile.”

                “Bandit job,” he said shortly, looking down at her with cool gray eyes. “There were more than twice as many as expected, and we had to form a plan.”

                One eyebrow raised, Ysmir echoed “’We’? Since when has Farkas helped with the planning?”

                “He mostly hunted,” said a smooth female voice. Ysmir glanced around Vilkas’s unfairly broad shoulders and grinned at Aela, eeling around Vil to embrace the Huntress.

                “I almost forgot what you look like, it’s been so long since you visited,” she teased, releasing the armor clad woman. Aela chuckled, hitching her pack up further onto her back. The pair were about as different as two women could be on the surface—mage and warrior, dragon and wolf—but where it counted they were alike as sisters. What had started as a rocky acceptance had solidified into a deep friendship over mutual loss and battles fought together: Both knew they would gladly lay down their life for the other, and that spoke more than any differences in temperament, occupation, or race. “Will you be staying?”

                Aela thought for a moment. “For a night or two, if you have the room to spare.”

                “The Honorhall children aren’t visiting any time soon,” Ysmir assured her, leading them both further into the house. “Inigo is off teaching Ma’Rakha some wilderness survival skills; the bard (what was this last one’s name?) quit; Sofie, Lucia, and Lydia went off to Riverwood to get some groceries; Runa and Honey-bee are in the basement; Alesan and Aventus are fishing in the lake; and Blaise…is doing his chores.”

                Aela and Vil ground to a halt, staring at her like she had just told them Alduin was in the apiary. “He’s what?” Vilkas—ever the disciplinarian and thus knowing full well what a pain it was to get Blaise to do anything he was disinclined to do—demanded, sounding slightly stunned.

                “I’ll explain later, after the ears in the walls have gone to sleep,” she promised, wagging her fingers at the upstairs balcony with an amused grin. Aventus grinned right back from where he had been unashamedly listening, holding up the bucket he had returned to fetch when she raised an eyebrow. The boy slipped back down the stairs and out the door with a wave of both greeting and farewell, making scarcely more noise than a mouse.

                The adults watched this for a moment before Aela glanced back at Ysmir. “You know, you really should put a bell on him.”

 

* * *

 

                Much later, after Runa and Darva had come up, the boys returned, Blaise woke up wondering what had happened, and Aela and the twins had “helped each other bathe,” Ysmir poured herself a glass of Cyrodilic Brandy while the Companions wolfed down their beef stew and ale, reflecting that they probably hadn’t had much but trail rations and whatever they caught as wolves for the last week. She sipped, reflecting on how much her life had changed since she had tried to sneak across the border into Skyrim. The girl that had left Cyrodiil, the mistrustful little teenager with an unnatural affinity for fire, had as good as died that day in Helgen. Something had responded under that black dragon’s gaze, past terror and wonder. She had known that Alduin was her kin, somehow, and that this was why she had always felt a slight disconnection with people, why she loved fire, and why she dreamed in a language not spoken by anyone she had ever met.

                The Dragonborn was the ultimate dragon slayer, Delphine had told her. Delphine, as far as Ysmir was concerned, could go die in a fire. Preferably dragon fire. Killing rampaging dragons was one thing, but Paarthurnax? That craggily old _dovah_ was the closest thing Ysmir had to a grandfather, and the Greybeards were like her crotchety old uncles. He was far kinder to her than her supposed real “grandfather,” the Thalmor  bastard who had liked pretty Imperial maids and had used his little half-blood daughter and her strange, violet-eyed child as his personal thieves and saboteurs.  When she was not-quite fourteen, she quickly turned into an asset to be traded to a hideous old Imperial duke as his wife in exchange for some treachery. Ysmir had been a widow before the night was out, presumed dead in the conflagration she left in her wake.

                Ysmir closed her eyes, not letting the memories upset her. That was why she had decided to stay in Skyrim, after all, in the land of the man supposedly her father, and the mercenary that had tried to save her mother, getting them both killed for his efforts. She could have a fresh start here, she had thought, but she had never imagined the scope of what her life would become. Looking around at her friends, she reflected that she would have it no other way.

                Her friendship with the Companions was an odd one. She probably would have met them sooner if she had decided to explore Whiterun rather than run off to the College of Winterhold right away. She supposed she should go back there eventually, but that Ancano reminded her far too much of The Bastard for her comfort. It was while out on a task for the College that she had found Skjor in werewolf form, injured and too faint from blood loss to move.

                Ysmir had always had a bad habit of taking in strays.

                Through Skjor, who was gone now, she had met Aela, his lover, and then the twins, who quickly became hers (Farkas first; Vilkas only joined them after some bottomless pit named Sam had challenged him to a drinking contest. Vil never spoke of what else had happened that night, only once letting slip something about a goat.). Not eager to marry anyone ever again, Ysmir happily shared her bed with both of them, as did Aela, who Ysmir secretly thought had never fully recovered from Skjor’s death. At any rate, the twins were wonderful dual father figures to her clan of half the orphans in Skyrim, with Vilkas being the patient but foreboding disciplinarian, and Farkas basically another giant child to romp with.

Aela had been somewhat taken aback by this, having neither a lot of experience with children, nor an overabundance of maternal instinct at the time. It seemed to awaken the more time she spent around the children, although she typically only spent a few days at a time with them until they got old enough not to mob her. A few late-night conversations with Ysmir made her suspect that the Huntress would like to carry on the line of Shield Sisters in the next few years. In the meantime, she was cultivating Runa to one day join the Companions, and Runa was exceptionally fond of her Auntie Aela.

                “So, Blaise,” she said, pouring herself a second cup of brandy. The werewolves stopped shoveling food into their faces and looked up at her questioningly. Gravy leaked down Farkas’s chin and she absently patted it off with a napkin as he swallowed, his mouth so full of food his cheeks looked like a chipmunk’s. “He was mind-controlled this afternoon.”

                Vilkas scowled, his brow lowering in a way that promised vengeance on anyone who had the audacity to mess with any of the children that had won their way into his heart. “Who? One of the mages looking for that alter we removed?”

                “A vampire?” Aela guessed.

                “A cultist?” Farkas put in, barely coherent around a mouthful of potato.

                “Worse,” she told them, and saw them steel themselves. “Darva.”

                Puzzlement passed over Farkas’s face, “Honey-bee? How did she mind-control anyone?”

                Ysmir’s shoulders slumped. “Do you remember two months ago when those bandits attacked and one of them held her hostage? I couldn’t do anything with him using her as a shield so…” They looked at her blankly, and she swirled the brandy in her glass before continuing, “When I was on Solstheim, the First Dragonborn used a Shout that could control the people’s minds. I learned it to use on dragons, but this once…”

                “You can mind control people?” Vilkas surmised, his brow lowering in a fierce frown.

                Ysmir scowled at him. “Just because I can doesn’t mean I do.”

                “The more pressing issue,” Aela said, putting a hand on Vil’s arm, “Is that now a five-year-old can bend minds, and that in order to do so, she might be—”

                “Dragonborn,” they all finished together, the others with wonder, Ysmir glumly.

                “But you were the Last Dragonborn,” Vil protested, getting right to the heart of the matter.

                “Apparently not,” she replied, watching what little was left in her glass glisten in the firelight. Her hand shook slightly, sending tiny wave reflections to dance over the skin of her hand; she hoped they didn’t notice.

                “That’s amazing!” Farkas enthused.

                Aela huffed, giving him a stern look. “Think, Ice Brain. If Darva is Dragonborn, then Ysmir isn’t really the Last Dragonborn, now is she?”

                He looked mildly confused, “So?”

                “So the Last Dragonborn is supposed to defeat Alduin,” Aela elucidated, following Ysmir’s train of thought as easily as she would a wounded deer.

                Vilkas shrugged, tearing the end off a loaf of bread and using it to mop up the last of the juices in his bowl. “I think you’re worrying too much about this, Ysmir,” he revealed, watching her pensively. “Alduin has already been defeated. By you. I don’t think we have anything to worry about, beyond the fact that a five year old can perform an unknown number of Shouts.”

                “I never got his soul,” she reminded him soberly. “His death was nothing like the other dragons, and according to Esbern, he has a destiny of his own to fulfill. I didn’t stop that destiny, I just delayed it.” Vilkas shrugged again, still unruffled, and she sighed, a bit put out at their nonchalant attitude. “Listen, whatever you may think, I have to get to get to the bottom of this, even if I have to go talk to the Blades. Paarthurnax is not exactly easy to find at the moment, but I’ll call him if I have to.” Ysmir hesitated a long moment. “Aela, I left many of my more dangerous books in my home in Raven Rock, so that the children wouldn’t get into them. I need one of them. I know you wanted to meet the werewolf pack there, and I could use the backup, if you wouldn’t mind accompanying me.”

                “Of course,” the Huntress reassured her, concern in every line of her statuesque form. At least one of them was taking this seriously.

                “What about us?” Farkas asked after exchanging a telling glance with his brother. Ysmir sometimes wondered if they had some sort of mind-linking twin bond or something when they did that.

                “I need you here at least until Lydia comes back,” she told them, not allowing herself to think on why she wanted neither of them on the ash-strewn island where she had fought the First Dragonborn. For one thing, she was pretty sure they could smell deception. For another, she didn’t want to think too closely about what she was going to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Ysmir introduces Aela to Raven Rock and another reason for the Nord to avoid book learning.


	2. Return to Raven Rock.

                _“Od Ah Viing!”_

                Aela took her hands off her ears and glared at the Dragonborn. “I hate it when you do that.”

                Ysmir shrugged apologetically, gazing across the water at the manor, nearly lost in the morning mist rising off Lake Ilinalta. She had left Vilkas in charge until Lydia got home, but Runa especially was old enough to keep everyone more or less in line by now. It was only for the occasional bandit or other such annoyance that one of the heavily armored adults was needed. She had considered calling Odahviing from nearer the manor, but now she was wary of what Darva might pick up, and it was early enough that she didn’t want to wake the youngest children. Lucia, always an early riser, had paused milking the cow to give her a goodbye cuddle, whispering to her to come back safely, making her wonder if perhaps she should explore other avenues of inquiry first.

                She shook off the doubt with effort. There was something she really should see, and it was long overdue—but she couldn’t think about that now. “Do you think Farkas is interested in Lydia?”

                Aela looked startled. “What? Why would you think that?”

                “He was gazing off toward Riverwood with a flushed face.”

                Aela rolled her eyes. “Mages and their words. You could have just said he was blushing.”

                Ysmir grinned, “I could have, but what fun is that?”

                The Huntress snorted, “Forget going back to Winterhold, you should go to Solitude and join the Bard’s Collage.”

                _“I hear you I hear you the Dragonborn comes!”_ Ysmir warbled at the top of her lungs. Across the water, Precious started howling. So much for not waking the children.

                Aela winced, a dog-like whine escaping her compressed lips. “I take it back.”

                “Is that a new _zun_ , a weapon, _Dovahkiin?”_ the red dragon asked, hovering above them, wings sounding like the snapping sails of the biggest ship in existence. “ _Yor strah wah nuft lovaas?_ A new way to use the Voice?”

                Ysmir glanced at Aela, “Well, it does appear to inflict pain.” She paused to cover her face as the massive dragon landed, gazing up fondly into his face. “I have a little problem, Odahviing, that I was hoping you had some advice for.”

                He cocked his head, his thoughtful exhalation breezing warmly over her face, mussing her hair. _“Kusah_. This is not what you normally call me for, _Dovahkiin_. _Fos eylok do diron?_ What sort of problem?”

                “Before I tell you, I must warn that this must be kept secret for now,” she said, eyes shadowed.

                _“Do rahlo_. Secrets I have in abundance, _Dovahkiin._ It will be no _brudaht_ to keep yours,” he assured her, lowering his head to gaze into her eyes. “Tell me your _diron_.”

                “My daughter used the Voice yesterday,” Ysmir said, watching his eyes widen. “I may not be the Last Dragonborn. What does this mean, Odahviing? Was Alduin not defeated? Will she one day have to face him herself?”

                _“Krosis,”_ he breathed, craning his massive head on his serpentine neck to look at the house. “I had not thought little _Kulaas_ would inherit the power of the _dov_. But she has used _rotmulaag?_ This is _zurun eldraag_ , unexpected. It does not fit with the Prophesy, but fate can be… _motmahus.”_

                Ysmir snorted. “In my experience, fate is anything but elusive. In fact, it’s downright pushy.”

                “What did he call Honey-bee?” Aela asked, gazing suspiciously at the mass of scales and muscle before her. Aela was still suspicious of the dragons, and rightly so. Her friend did wish she would ease up around Odahviing, though. Of all dragons, she trusted him and Paarthurnax most.  

                “The dragons have their own name for Darva: _Kulaas,”_ the Dragonborn’s smile held a hint of laughter. “It means princess.”

                _“Vrah._ The Old One, he picked it. Some thought it _rem kriis_ , pretentious for a human child. Perhaps he knew his kin when she was born,” the way he said that made her wonder if perhaps he had as well, but since he did not feel it worth mentioning, she didn’t push. Maybe he was embarrassed not to have mentioned it at the time, though he had been fairly preoccupied with how tiny and wiggly the infant had been. Honestly, the dragon had spent nearly as much time staring at the child in complete disbelief as Ysmir had.

                Ysmir sighed. “It would not surprise me. If you see Paarthurnax, would you mind telling him that I might be calling? Not why, of course, but that I might have need of his wisdom.”

                A hot breath of air heralded Odahviing’s chuckle. “I suspect, _Dovahkiin,_ that once hearing that you wish to talk he may seek you out. The Old One enjoys _tinvaak_ with whoever will indulge him.” Ysmir laughed aloud and Odahviing’s jaw dropped in a smile wide enough to inhale her and not notice. “What now will you do, _Dovahkiin?_ _Fos stig fen hi kuz?”_

                Ysmir wrinkled her nose. “I’m off to Falkreath, where I can take a carriage to Windhelm, then a boat to Raven Rock.” At this rate, she really should just hire another private carriage driver, but they’d been avoiding her after what happened to the last one. As if she had any control where a dragon would drop a mammoth carcass!

                _“Tol los rigirtiv, Dovahkiin_. You go south and west to go north and east. It will take many days. _Zu'u los kusahraal._ I will help you in your quest. Pack light, and I will take you and your _mungrohiik koriid_ to the island. It has been an age since I last saw it, though once I thought to call it home.”

                Well that was interesting, but his tone was not one that invited questions, and she did not want to lose his good will. _“Nox hi, Odahviing.”_

 

* * *

                

                Aela was gazing around curiously, her nose twitching slightly as she took in the sights and smells of Raven Rock—or perhaps because of the ash. Seagulls arched overhead, though not nearly as many as in a less ash-strewn port, and Dunmer and Redguard sailors rushed back and forth to get things stowed away on the ships that filled the docks. Second Councilor Adril had met her coming off the ship, having been personally overseeing some of the ebony shipments out to Blacklight, and had greeted her enthusiastically. Apparently further forays in the barrow beyond the mine had unearthed several new ore veins, as well as a small supply of stalhrim that, if carefully husbanded, crept back over the coffins every few weeks to be mined again. The priest had reluctantly given the go-ahead, so the bodies were removed from the crypt, incinerated just in case, the ashes interred in urns and returned to the potential draugr’s original resting place. After what happened at Kolbjorn Barrow, the Dunmer miners were much more comfortable with cremated remains than ones that could get up and hack at them, though they had been tightly sealed to prevent them from turning into Ash Spawn. Ysmir didn’t bother to tell him that they would need a heart stone for that.

                “So many elves…” the werewolf murmured as they walked through the main part of town.

                “Many refugees out of Morrowind settled here,” Ysmir told her in an undertone, buying some essentials for the house as they passed through the market. She wondered what Aela would think of sujamma. She stopped and chatted a bit with a few of the people she knew before heading to Severin Manor. Aela’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline as they entered and immediately went downstairs, but Ysmir was too keyed up to notice. Just being back in Raven Rock brought back so many memories and feelings, as if the years were layers of ash being stripped away, leaving her feeling raw and exposed.

                “Are you expecting to be attacked or something?” the Companion asked, picking up on her mood.

                “No…I just…have to do something I rather wouldn’t. Those books I told you about earlier? They aren’t the kind of books you read,” she fidgeted nervously as she sank onto the bed, drawing out a pair of enchanted gauntlets from the chest at its foot and donning them. With a spell on them to increase her stamina and health, they made her feel just the teensiest bit better about what she was going to do.

                Aela cocked a hip and placed her fist upon it. “What kind of books are they?” she demanded.

                Ysmir let out an explosive breath, “They’re portals to the Plane of Oblivion called Apocrypha, the realm of hidden knowledge.”

                The other woman gaped at her for a moment, and then began to curse furiously. “Mages! Always meddling where you don’t belong! Hermaeus Mora is a vicious Daedra, Ysmir! People go mad when they deal with him.”

                “I’m aware. That’s why I keep the Books here, in that,” she waved to the bookcase, then realized Aela would have no idea what she meant. Rising, she gestured for the Huntress to join her at the shelf. “Help me, would you?” she asked. Struggling and grunting, the two women moved the heavily-laden shelves to the side, to reveal what looked like a section of badly repaired wall. To a thief, it would look as if the homeowner was trying to hide it, but Ysmir took out her dagger and slid it beneath one of the bricks, levering it out to reveal the mushroom-shaped button behind it.

                She glanced at Aela, who frowned at the extensive secrecy. Ysmir reached in and slid her fingertips under the button, pulling up. If pressed, the button would reveal a hidden needle that would poison the presser. It had to be pulled. The bricks slid sideways, opening a tiny half-room no bigger than a cupboard, containing a large rectangular Dwemer chest. Ysmir had once tried and failed to break into this chest, so difficult was the lock.  When she had found herself in possession of the Black Books and realized their danger, she had gone back into the ruin and hauled the chest out with her, taking it to a locksmith and telling them that they could keep whatever they found inside so long as he did not damage the lock and made her a key.

                On the off-chance that any thieves that came to Severin Manor were better lock pickers than her, she had hid the chest. She doubted it though—she had enough loot deliberately placed that any thief would be too full-up by the time they got back here, even if they had extra pockets. Also, she was dammed good at picking locks.

                Sliding the key in, she turned the lock home. The gears whirled and the domed lid slid back. The Books lay inside, all seven of them, with the Oghma Infinium filling out the second stack to make two even stacks of four books each. She shivered, glad her gauntlets had gloves. Then she drew out the first pile and pulled “Waking Dreams” from the bottom, carefully setting it aside and replacing the rest, locking the chest, and closing the wall. She didn’t replace the shelf, in case she needed to put the Book back in a hurry.

                “I’m going to sit on the bed and read this,” she explained to Aela. “It won’t be pretty, and I’ll be tired and shaken when I come back out. I won’t be able to defend myself like that.”

                “I understand,” Aela replied, looking unhappy about all this. “Are you sure this is necessary?”

                “Unfortunately, yes. Enough people wanted to prove that I wasn’t Dragonborn that if there had been _any_ doubt, they would have brought it up. Hermaeus Mora is the Prince of Forbidden Knowledge. If any record exists that might tell us if I’m not the Last Dragonborn, he would know it,” Ysmir replied, going and sitting cross-legged on her bed. Normally, it was a rule with her that you took off your shoes before getting on a bed. Since that would mean walking barefoot in Apocrypha, however, she made an exception. Taking a deep breath, she opened the Book.

                A line of sickly green runes wrapped about her, quickly transforming into a thick black tentacle. Aela made a sound of disgust, jumping back. As her sense of reality dimmed, Ysmir heard her say, distantly, “Ugh! That can _not_ be good for you!”

_“No,”_ Ysmir thought, _“It’s not…”_

 

* * *

 

 

                She was back. The realm of Apocrypha lurched and spun around her, islands of books and fibrous matter suspended above a black sea. Masses of writhing tentacles rose from the sea, descended from the sky, whipped at her from the stone-lined pool not ten feet from her. That was new; there hadn’t been a pool there the last time she was here. The Prince of Forbidden Knowledge must be redecorating, but then the landscape of this place was always changing, even if the inky ocean and sickly ambient glow never faded. Making her way along the page-strewn paths, she paused when a flickering shadow caught her attention. _“Gol Hah Dov,”_ she breathed. The shifting, glittering smoke coalesced into a figure that once was a human, but all that was left of that were its arms. Clothed in rags, its head looked like a half-shriveled squid. It peered at her blandly, the long fingers on its emaciated hands twisting about each other, as if it were nervous or confused.

                “Take me to your master,” she commanded, and it turned, floating away from its eternal search for whatever bit of knowledge had brought it here as a human. She followed it through the ever-changing hallways and bridges of the island, ignored by Seeker and Lurker alike once they caught sight of her guide, and halting in a small room that held nothing but a scrye. She touched the strange, glowing flower and it folded in on itself.

                The door swung open silently, and the figure within looked up, freezing momentarily. “I never expected you to return to this realm, Dragonborn.”

                “Hello, Miraak.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dragon Language:  
> Most things in the Dragon Language are repeated right afterwards in a more understandable fashion, as it was used in game. That's why I didn't keep track of what was what exactly. But as this story went on, it became harder and harder to just use context clues, so, here I go with the regret.  
> I'm actually having a bit of a problem translating with the new translator (even though this was made with the previous version), so most of these will be the meaning from memory, and not exact. Phrases and words that the translator gave me directly can no longer be translated in it, and quite frankly I don't have the time to learn an entire language right now. I'll eventually be redoing the Dovahzul in this piece entirely, but today is not that day. 
> 
> _Yor strah wah nuft lovaas?_ A new way to use the Voice?  
>  _Kusah_ Interesting.   
> _Fos eylok do diron?_ What sort of problem?  
>  _Do rahlo._ Of course.   
> _diron_ problem  
>  _Krosis_ Apologies  
>  _Kulaas_ Princess  
>  _dov_ dragon-kind (all dragons, as opposed to one dragon)  
>  _rotmulaag_ Word of Power  
>  _zurun eldraag_ unexpected  
>  _motmahus_ elusive, in this case, twisty or difficult to understand  
>  _Vrah_ basically, "yeah."  
>  _rem kriis_ pretentious  
>  _tinvaak_ speech, conversation (Paarthurnax is a terrible hermit, if you think about it)  
>  _Fos stig fen hi kuz?_ What direction/path will you take?  
>  _Tol los rigirtiv, Dovahkiin._ That's backwards, Dragonborn.   
> _Zu'u los kusahraal._ I shall carry you.  
>  _mungrohiik koriid_ werewolf friend  
>  _Nox hi_ Thank you. 
> 
>  
> 
> Next chapter: The events at the Summit of Apocrypha.


	3. At the Summit of Apocrypha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I start introducing some headcannons here. There are a few big ones, mostly to do with racial abilities in interracial children and differences in the abilities of various Dragonborn. Also, I try to explain some in-game things. One here is that enchanters can read the enchantment runes on an item, and that's how you always know what something's enchantment is when it's in your inventory. Runes are a language of sigils, and the more a person practices, the better they can read the language of exactly how an enchantment was made. Following that, it is possible to damage an enchantment or enchanted item by targeting where the enchantment was placed on it, or just beating the crap out of that piece of equipment until it no longer works. I don't think a piece of leather armor that is mostly arrow holes should really be able to up a person's light armor bonus. While that scenario doesn't come up in-game (this game, anyway), it was too jarring to think of an enchantment basically outlasting the item's usefulness. Aaaand there I go monologuing.

  _Six years ago…_

                “And so the First Dragonborn meets the Last Dragonborn at the summit of Apocrypha,” Miraak said, walking slowly toward her. Ysmir watched him warily, one hand on Sahrotaar’s neck, the thrumming of the dragon’s heartbeat pulsing through her fingertips. “No doubt just as Hermaeus Mora intended. He is a fickle master, you know. But now I will be free of him. My time in Apocrypha is over. You are here in your full power, and thus subject to my full power. You will die, and with the power of your soul, I will return to Solstheim and be master of my own fate once again.”

                “Nice speech,” Ysmir replied, aware of her own heart pounding just as hard as Sahrotaar’s. The draw she always felt around dragons was so intensified around this other _dovah_ in human form. Every time she saw him, it got worse. “We’ve met before, if you recall. You stole my dragon souls, you lazy bastard.”

                Miraak paused and laughed, sounding surprised. “Lazy? I have been plotting, planning, and preparing for longer than you can imagine. I’ve amassed followers, gained devotion—”

                “Turned random citizens into your own private building crews, I _know_. With all that power, you’d think you’d be able to go out and win your own dammed dragon souls, without stooping to stealing mine,” she huffed, hands on her hips.

                The First Dragonborn paused to consider her. “Is that all you’re angry about? Me stealing your prey?”

                “Well, leaving Alduin to wreak havoc is also on the list,” she replied acidly.

                "Felling Alduin was a mighty deed, and I thank you for it. He would have proved troublesome to me," Miraak said, circling her. His smooth voice had a tightness to it that put her on edge, and she was uncomfortably reminded of the usual aftermath of taking a dragon’s soul, when the adrenaline and heady sensation of victory made her impulsive. It was the main reason she mostly traveled with the twins.

                “Should have left him alive a bit longer, I guess,” Ysmir growled, irked. “Perhaps you would have destroyed each other and saved me the trouble.”

                Miraak laughed again, sending shivers down her spine, and not because she was afraid. In a lot of ways, it would have been better if she were afraid—fear she had dealt with before, had conquered many times. This was a different beast altogether. “Sahrotaar, aloft,” he commanded, and the dragon took off in a swirl of air that smelled of decay and old ink. "They wanted to use me to deal with Alduin—Hakon and the rest. I chose otherwise."

                “I know,” she replied, refusing to turn to face him as he circled behind her but keeping careful track of his steps, “Gormlaith told me, when _I_ went to Sovngarde to defeat him.” That woman had quite a bit to say about Miraak, most of which Ysmir now wished she had kept to herself. If she had known it was even remotely possible she would meet the man, she would have excused herself from the conversation much earlier.

                “Gormlaith…” the First Dragonborn said meditatively. “I remember her.”

                “And she _certainly_ remembers you,” she said before she thought, somewhat more emphatically than she might like.

                “Does she?” he asked, a definite smirk in his voice, and Ysmir began to regret talking. She should have throttled down her need to speak with another Dragonborn and gone right to the killing. She was as bad as Paarthurnax.

                She had forgotten to keep track of his footfalls. Ysmir suppressed a flinch as her enemy was suddenly just out of arm’s reach, looking down at her. This close, she could see his eyes were two different colors; one a lovely sky blue, the other slitted and yellow, as if after so long his dragon soul had clawed its way out to change his flesh. The skin was dark around the eye, but she couldn’t see more through the shadow of the mask. Instinctively, she turned to face him, fire enveloping her hands, flickering through her hair and over her shoulders, from behind her eyes as with no other mage she had ever met. Her own, personal version of a Flame Cloak, similar enough to Dragon Aspect that she now wondered if it were a manifestation of her _dovahsil,_ somehow activated without a _thu’um._ Vilkas had once told her that she looked beautiful and terrifying at once when she was like this.

                She couldn’t know it, but Miraak agreed. “I had forgotten,” he said around the tightness in his chest, the feeling of connection that had invaded what he thought was a heart long withered to such things. “It’s been so long since I met another _Dovahkiin._ I didn’t anticipate this.”

                Puzzlement crossed her features—Miraak had always thought she was striking, but that expression revealed her as worryingly young, and the realization took him off-guard. _“Eh draaf,”_ he muttered, glancing away for a moment. He didn’t want to kill her. She was the key to his regaining his own life—had, in fact, destroyed his other efforts at freeing himself—and he didn’t want to kill her. Why? Because she was just like him, and so enticingly unlike him, and because he found her so very alluring. He doubted she knew, else she would surely be taking advantage, but most _dov_ were male. Females were born one to every eighteen or so males, and so were protected. It was one of the _dov’s_ greatest secrets, for it could be used against them so easily. And so here he was, a man with a dragon’s soul, struggling with the fierce urge to protect a female _dovah_ , and the instinct to produce more _dov._

                Well, couldn’t have that ruining his plans.

                _“Fo Krah Diin!”_ he Shouted, and she cried out at the sudden icy assault. He had expected to extinguish her fire, but she flared up and dove at him with a yell of pure fury, a dragon in a terrifyingly weak body, her flaming hands curled into claws. He drew his sword and slashed at her, but she wiggled out of the way of the worst of the blow like a ferret, exposing a flash of skin along her thigh where his sword rent her clothing.

                Ysmir ducked under the sinister blade and shot fire at the First Dragonborn from both hands, her face a snarl. Fire bloomed off him as he staggered back, taken aback by the sheer force of the assault. “I didn’t get this old by being stupid, Dragonborn,” he mocked. “Dragon fire has no effect on me, and spells are blunted.”

                “I didn’t become one of the best Enchanters in Skyrim by not learning how to see enchantments!” she shot back, and Miraak was momentarily struck dumb as an unassuming strip of leather on the underside of his gauntlet crumbled to ash, the glimmer of enchantment shimmering and fading from the armor piece. The buffering effect stopped immediately as the magic seeped out into the stagnant air. She shook her hand and lightning crackled between her fingers, arching off the tips and giving Miraak just enough warning to enact a ward before using a Shout to put distance between them long enough for him to reevaluate his strategy.

                “You are strong. Stronger than I believed possible. You could have been mighty, if fate had not decreed otherwise," he said, not letting his regret color his words.

                _“Wuld Nah Kest!”_ she retorted, bringing her within a few paces of him. The Dragon Priest dagger in her hand cut across his side as she passed, an exquisite irony he was sure she had meant to rub his face in. He staggered slightly as poison seeped through the wound, draining both his physical and magical reserves. Sheathing it as she whirled, the Last Dragonborn’s hands contorted in a way that confused him momentarily, it had been so long since he had seen the action. His eyes widened and he hastily erected a spherical ward to keep out the Fire Storm that raged around them when she enacted the spell. Quickly he glanced around, searching for her through the dazzling flames. The empty blue bottle of a magicka potion bounced off the outside of his ward, and he turned towards it instinctively, only to have her Shout from the direction he had just turned his back on. _“Zun Haal Viik!”_

                Miraak gripped his sword tighter as the force of her Shout nearly forced him to lose it. _“Ven Gar Nos!”_ he Shouted back, seeing her tuck and roll out of the way and using the opportunity to retreat and draw his staff. Aiming it at the ground beneath her feet, he used almost a quarter of the magic within to create a mass of writhing, venomous tentacles that wrapped themselves around her as she cried out in dismay, smothering the flames between them. With so many, there was no way she could escape them. She lurched away from the center, but the mass was too large. Ysmir staggered and fell to her knees. Miraak’s hands curled into fists as he resisted the urge of the _dovah_ inside to save her, instinct raging against ambition. Flame blossomed around her, momentarily withering the tentacles, and she used the moment of respite to do the last thing he expected.

                Ysmir looked straight down, and Shouted. _“Fus Ro Dah!”_

                The young woman went sailing upward, where Sahrotaar, still under her will, caught her, landing as golden light arched and danced around the claw he cradled her with. Miraak glared, feeling oddly betrayed. _"Sahrotaar, zii los dii du!"_

                The dragon screamed as his treachery brought the only possible end, and his flesh withered on his bones as his soul went to nourish Miraak, healing him and returning his strength. Within the circle of bones, Ysmir shakily got to her feet, flames once again dancing over her form as the soul whipped the air around her like a strong wind. Her clothes were starting to look a bit charred around the edges, elven chainmail glinting through some of the holes. “You’d kill your own ally?” she asked, voice shaking with rage.

                “As assuredly as I’d kill yours,” he told her grimly, shooting more tentacles at her feet.

                _“Wuld!”_ she cried quickly, bringing herself closer to him like an approaching comet. She finally drew the sword that had been sheathed across her back, a thin, slightly curving blade that filled him with a curious foreboding. Suddenly he realized why she’d waited to wield it—it was made for the slaying of dragons. Just carrying it must have rubbed raw against her soul. With a yell she cast herself at him again, the sword dancing in her grip as she Shouted for the fury of the elements to assist her.

                Miraak parried, wishing he’d had someone to practice against before he crossed blades in combat, especially against an opponent who probably had opportunity to utilize her skills daily. Still, he’d been a skilled swordsman even before Mora had trapped him, and since then had been spending a lot of time teaching himself more. She was bleeding just as much as he was when he used his superior strength to knock her aside, feeling slightly unnerved at his reaction to her proximity. The Last Dragonborn tumbled with the blow, rolling to mitigate the force and bring her back to her feet in a crouch.

                Ysmir charged again almost immediately, barely giving herself the time to shake off the irritatingly electric feeling that had raced over her skin when he had touched her, even in combat. No wonder there was only supposed to be one Dragonborn in an age. She stayed low this time, using his height against him and utilizing Elemental Fury once more to speed her movements, aiming to whittle away at his protections while she still had the energy. Damn it, but didn’t this man ever _tire?_

                Another enchantment flickered out as she sliced across the runes on his boot, weakening his spell resistance. A grim smile crossed her face, and this time he could neither avoid nor dampen her fire when it hit him. He gasped _“Feim Zii Gron,”_ and raced for the center, holding his side where she had burned him. He cursed, ruing the restrictions on his earlier observations of her; most of the battles on Solstheim he had managed to watch suggested she liked to stay out of harm’s way, allowing her heavily armed companions to draw the fire as she struck from afar. His entire strategy for dealing with her and been built around that assumption. Now he realized how much she restrained herself to keep those same companions from being caught in her attacks. “ _Kruziikrel, zii los dii du!"_ Kruziikrel fell from the sky as his soul was ripped from him, and Miraak sighed as his wounds closed, as his strength returned. Time to reevaluate.

                “Quit doing that!” the enraged female shrieked, her sword passing through his ethereal form from behind. To his surprise, it stung quite a bit.

                “I will win this fight, Dragonborn,” he told her coldly, turning to see that bizarre flaming Aspect around her once more. “I must have your soul to escape this place. Your soul or one other’s, and he I cannot touch.”

                “You think you’re the only one who knows what it’s like to need to escape? To be trapped somewhere?” she demanded, her eyes blazing so bright her whites were gone. Violet fire flickered over her eyebrows and into her hairline, and Miraak wondered (irrelevantly) if someone had somehow bedded a Flame Atronach somewhere in her ancestry. “You’re not!”

                Ysmir focused on that, the old fears, the need to escape her childhood home. It was what fueled her fire, what made her fight when she was very nearly passed endurance. Tears welled in her eyes and evaporated before they coursed down her cheeks as she spat spiteful vindictive at Miraak, probably more than she had ever admitted to anyone. It didn’t matter how much of her past she was shouting out at the man; he would very shortly be dead anyway, and she needed the fury the memories brought with them. Damn it all, but she didn’t _want_ to kill him! Beat him senseless, oh Divines yes, but the only one who truly needed to die was the Daedric Prince behind everything. None of this would be happening if that unscrupulous floating eyeball hadn’t at one point decided to cage a dragon.

                But Hermaeus Mora was out of the reach of even a Dragonborn, and Miraak clearly wouldn’t stop until he was free, no matter what the cost. Firming her resolve, she summoned all that old fury and directed it at the First Dragonborn, determined, if nothing else, to stop his boundless ambition.

                Miraak was solid again.

                He leapt backward, bringing his stave up to block her blades, his face behind his mask a rictus of rage. “I’m going to kill all those dammed yellow elves,” he growled, and shock froze her long enough for him to catch against the hilt of Dragonbane and spiral it away, sending it skittering over the side of the Summit. “How dare they treat a _Dovahkiin_ with anything less than respect? I’ll see them _crawl.”_

                Ysmir jumped out of his reach, taken aback by his response.  Shaking her head and recalling herself to the task at hand, she switched her dagger to her main hand and summoned a Dremora Lord behind him with the other.

                “A challenger is near!” the hulking, red-laced Daedra cried, drawing his broadsword and charging, each step booming against the ground with the weight of his ebon armor.

                Miraak stared for a moment. “Well, they haven’t changed,” he said, so low Ysmir thought she couldn’t have heard him right. Miraak having a sense of humor went counter to her world-view.

                “I honor my Lady by destroying you!” the Daedra declared boldly.

                Annoyed, Miraak Shouted it off the edge of the platform and watched it fall to its demise. “I hate those things,” he muttered, then remembered the girl. Turning proved she was almost on him, her poisoned blade cutting so close it sliced his clothing and left a shallow line of stinging venom across his chest. Gripping the cloth with her other hand, she ripped a good portion of his robes off his shoulders, burning his chest with her fire. The cloth covering his shoulder and right arm turned to ash in an instant, taking a decent amount of his skin with it. He yelled in pain, becoming ethereal once again and sacrificing the last of his dragon thralls. There would be no more chances, no more hesitating or warring with himself; he had to kill her quickly.

                Ysmir had nearly reached him when he became tangible once more, and his Cyclone hit her just after she managed the first word of Unrelenting Force. It struck Miraak in the side of the head, knocking his mask askew and sending him sprawling out of the black pool. For a few crucial moments, he saw stars.

                The Last Dragonborn saw her chance. Racing up, she raised her dagger, skidded to her knees next to Miraak and…stopped.

                Half his face displayed strong, finely hewn features, with full lips and high cheekbones. That alone wouldn’t have given her pause, but the other half was covered in the green-brown scales of a dragon, fading out and merging with his skin around the edges. A single blond braid partially obscured it, and without thinking she brushed it away to better see the effects of a dragon’s soul after countless years. The eyes snapped open and a hand shot up to grasp her wrist. One was blue, the other a dragon’s eye, as she had thought. The feeling of his bare skin on her arm sent a surge of sensation through her, similar to and stronger than the euphoria of taking a dragon’s soul. For a moment he glared up into her startled face, both of them breathing heavily with exertion and fury, and she couldn’t move to save her life.

                Then he yanked firmly on her arm, pulling her off balance as she fell towards him, and just when she would have expected to feel a dagger sliding into her ribs, he kissed her.

                Ysmir had been kissed before, especially since she had started fighting dragons. Nord men liked their women as strong as their mead, so it apparently came with the job. But nothing in her experience had prepared her for this. She felt as if Miraak was trying to devour her soul through the carnal touch of his lips upon hers, and found herself reciprocating with a ferocity that shocked her. Her dagger went skittering away, their clothing torn off in their haste to touch, to taste, to…she wasn’t entirely sure what they were trying to do. They might even have been still fighting, trying to dominate one another as they rolled and clashed together, scratched and bit. Then, abruptly, he was on top of her with the most determined expression she had ever seen, and with a single thrust he invaded her. She gasped, nails digging into his arms as they ceased their battle and began to move as one. Ysmir reached up and grasped his hair, pulling his head down until she could reach his lips, wrapping her arms around him as a sensation not unlike claiming a soul filled her mind.

                Miraak was lost, and he was pretty sure the woman in his arms was too. Her warmth surrounded him, filled him as he filled her, and he almost hated himself for a moment. But when she kissed him, and light and sound rushed into his mind…thought fled and the souls of the only two _Dovahkiinne_ in the world met and soared together.

.

* * *

 . 

                Miraak stooped and lifted his mask from where it had landed, darting a glance at the girl as he fitted it over his face. The sleeves were gone from her mage robes, and she had sliced the hood to use as a wrap to cover her chest. She looked very fetching like that, mostly naked and covered in soot. Her face was as red as her hair as she examined her ruined chainmail, as if wondering how exactly he had managed to rend it apart. Truthfully, she was wondering why someone that strong hadn’t just simply grabbed her and pulled her limb from limb in the first place. Had she had his motivations wrong from the start, or had he been caught as off-guard as she was?

                “Um,” she halted, glancing at him shyly. That was strange; he hadn’t pegged her for shyness. “Have you seen my other boot?”

                He could see it, on the other side of the pool from her, obscured from her vision by the rim. A few strides brought him to it, and he tossed it to her wordlessly.

                “Thanks,” she said, staring at the expressionless mask. Miraak sighed and removed it. The mask was the face of her enemy, the one beneath that of her lover. It was not a position either had found themselves in before. He watched her as she sat on the rim of the pool to pull the boot on. “So…what now?” she finally asked, staring at the ground as she scuffed it with her toe. She looked absurdly young like that, and he felt his years like a wound.

                Miraak stared at her helplessly, uncertain. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “I could still kill you, but it would leave a bad taste in my mouth.” With that comforting statement he sank beside her on the pool’s rim, gazing out over Apocrypha. “I will still be trapped here,” the look in his eyes just then made her think that the thought was bad enough that he might just get over his hesitation.

                “There has to be some other way to get you out!” she said earnestly, and he looked at her in completely dumbfounded amazement at the thought that she would _offer_ to help him. “I mean, provided you don’t decide to become an evil overlord again, then we’d be right back where we started, only in Nirn, rather than Oblivion.” She finally turned to see his expression. “What?”

                “Why would you help me?” he asked, wondering if she had cracked her head on the ground earlier.

                Her face slowly turned red again, starting with her cheeks and moving outward, creeping down her neck and distracting him for a moment as his eyes traced its path over her bare shoulders. “Good question,” she replied, glancing away. “But…it’s not fair that you’re stuck here.”

                A small smile, the first she had seen, curved his lips. “I will leave someday, Dragonborn, rest assured,” he said, his usual arrogance returning. After all, he could just continue stealing dragon souls from her, but he was not about to suggest that after her earlier irritation.

                She shook her head, a small smile playing across her features, “Call me Ysmir.”

                The slight splash was all the warning they had. A huge tentacle burst out of the pool behind them and impaled Miraak through the chest, lifting the stunned man high above the platform. Ysmir screamed and scuttled backward hastily, gazing up in horror. The Daedric Prince appeared at last, blotting out the sickly moss-hued sky like spilled ink.

                “Did you think to escape me, Miraak? You can hide nothing from me here. No matter. I have found a new Dragonborn to serve me,” Hermaeus Mora declared, hovering as a grotesque mass of eyes and tentacles above them.

                “No!” Ysmir shrieked, frantically throwing a healing spell at the First Dragonborn. A second tentacle rose from the pool and knocked her aside, sending her skittering across the uneven ground like she was no more than just another stray piece of empty parchment.

                Miraak tasted blood. Spitting it out, he drew a shallow breath and murmured something too faint for Ysmir to hear over the ringing in her ears. He began to glow as his clothing incinerated. Tears blurred before her eyes and Apocrypha lurched around them, sloshing the liquid and knocking her back to the ground. Abruptly, the tentacle seemed to dissolve and Miraak dropped, naked, his skin gone in some places as he fought the incineration. He grasped the weeping wound in his chest and Spoke.

                The world quaked again, and Ysmir fell out of Apocrypha with a scream.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dragon Language:  
>  _dovah_ Dragon, singular  
>  _dovahsil_ dragon soul  
>  _thu'um_ Shout  
>  _Eh draaf_ essentially, "ah shit."  
>  _dov_ dragon, plural, dragon-kind  
>  _Fo Krah Diin!_ Frost Breath  
>  _Wuld Nah Kest!_ Whirlwind Sprint  
>  _Zun Haal Viik!_ Disarm  
>  _Ven Gar Nos!_ Cyclone  
>  _Fus Ro Dah!_ Unrelenting Force  
>  _Sahrotaar, zii los dii du!_ Sahrotaar, your soul is mine to devour!  
>  _Wuld_ first Word of Whirlwind Sprint
> 
>  
> 
> Next chapter: Ysmir and Miraak have a conversation that probably should have taken place five years ago.


	4. Knowledge and Fate

 

 

                Miraak rose, setting aside whatever it was he had been writing. The mask was as expressionless as ever, and she wondered why he wore it when he was alone. “I love what you’ve done with the place,” she said, going for nonchalance as she leaned against the inside of the door. The eyes narrowed behind the mask and a single hand waved, once. The door shut, shoving her into the room.

                He was very close within a matter of seconds. Ysmir’s heart started to pound, and not just because she wondered if he had made up his mind about killing her. She’d forgotten how tall he was— he probably topped Farkas by almost a quarter head. The younger Dragonborn didn’t even reach his collarbone. For a long moment he just stared down at her, eyes glinting in the darkness of his mask. She wondered what he would do if she reached up and removed it. Perhaps it was best not to find out, but of course she did it anyway, because sense apparently flew out the window with Miraak.

                His face was just as she remembered it, expressionless but for a slight crease between his brows and the fury of thoughts whirling behind his eyes. Finally, he voiced one. “Why are you here? I all but told you I would kill you if you returned, and I have had six more years in Apocrypha to motivate me.”

                Ysmir watched his lips as he spoke. Damn the man anyway: What did a man need with such perfect lips? “I needed to come here even if it were Hermaeus Mora who was still in charge,” she told him, unable to keep the quaver from her voice. “I thought he might not be.”

                A corner of the lips quirked up, sardonically, it seemed to her. “And why would you think that?”

                “Your last words. I finally sorted them out: _’Zii los dii du, Hermaeus Mora.’_ His was the other soul that could fuel your return. You made a point of saying that the other soul could not be touched, but when he stabbed you…” she trailed off, eyes darkening as the image of him suspended in the air flashed through her mind. She shouldn’t care, she knew she shouldn’t, but it still affected her. She’d thought of him, of that moment, more than she dared to recall.

                “And yet I am still here,” he pointed out, lifting one arm to indicate the shifting walls of the Oblivion Realm of Knowledge.

                She smiled, “A while back I met Sheogorath. Do you know what he told me? He told me he was my ancestor. Gave me a long story to go with it, and a lot of cheese. I thought it was just madness, but then I started looking into it. It might be madness, but there is a good chance that it’s true.” She gazed back up into his eyes, which still whirled. “I thought that if one mortal can become a Daedric Prince, why not two? It’s not as if you didn’t have experience running Apocrypha already.”

                “Clever,” he breathed, leaning closer, “So very clever…”

                His lips touched hers with all the thrill she remembered, and before she could stop herself she molded against him as she had done so many times in dreams she wouldn’t admit to having. For one seemingly eternal moment they were together again, with all the passions and pitfalls that entailed, then one of Sofie’s pins dug into her breast and she gasped, jumping back. “Right. Job to do,” she said, pulling out the pin with a wince. Part of the hem unfolded where it hadn’t been completely mended, but for once she was grateful to her adopted daughter’s forgetfulness.

                Miraak looked as breathless as she felt. “What brought you back to Apocrypha?” he asked, for he knew the answer would never be him, not after she left him for dead for six years.

                Ysmir pursed her lips in thought, not knowing how much she wanted to reveal. Buying a few moments by folding the pin in a spare handkerchief and stowing it in her belt pouch, she decided the direct approach would probably be best. “Miraak, in all your reading, did you ever think that I might not be the Last Dragonborn?”

                He scoffed, straightening clothes she didn’t remember tugging at and going back to his desk. “Ridiculous. Why would you even ask?”

                “I…Let’s suppose I met someone who could Shout…”

                “The Greybeards can Shout. No one ever accused them of being Dragonborn,” he retorted, sounding scornful.

                “This person picked up the Shout after hearing it once, just like I did Dragonrend,” she said, shifting uncomfortably as she pressed her thighs together, then stopping when she realized what she was doing.

                Miraak realized it too, and the lavishious smile that spread across his features had the dual effect of making her want go sit in his lap and purr like a Khajiit, or whack him over the head with the Wabbajack before turning him into a mudcrab.  She scowled, “Well? I’m pretty sure this person is Dragonborn.”

                “It is still impossible,” the new Daedric Prince of Knowledge assured her, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet up on the desk. “You probably just met a particularly talented Tongue. All Tongues can learn to use the Voice, albeit crudely and after years of study. Even your Ulfric Stormcloak managed to figure it out.” His dismissive tone showed exactly what he thought of that.

                Ysmir snorted, “Ulfric is not ‘my’ anything,” she muttered. “He’s just a pawn in the Thalmor’s game to weaken the Empire.”

                “And wouldn’t it be interesting to watch him discover _that_?” Miraak enthused. Ysmir kept her peace on the subject: Darva was more important to her than Ulfric’s troublesome history with her grandfather’s regime. “Anyway, I would not be too quick to assume this person is Dragonborn. Even if they are, all you need to do to remain the Last Dragonborn is outlive them.”

                “I’m…older,” she admitted, fiddling with her hands nervously.

                Miraak shrugged, “So ensure it. Kill them.”

                Ysmir froze. Of course Miraak would suggest that. “I can’t.”

                A cold smile crossed the handsome, transformed face, “I can. Where is this person?” At her stubborn look, the flames that flickered momentarily over hands curled into fists, he knew he had gotten to her. “I can go looking if you won’t tell me. I discover everything, eventually, and I have all of Hermaeus Mora’s followers as well as my cultists just waiting for an order…”

                “Miraak, if you touch her, I’ll make you wish that tentacle had killed you,” she promised.

                The infuriating smile widened. “Oh, a _her_ is it? That narrows down the search by half—”

                “It’s our daughter!” Ysmir burst out, all unwilling.

                The smile vanished as Miraak sat up, the chair thumping to the floor. “What?”

                “The newest Dragonborn is our daughter,” she repeated, not able to look at him. Somehow, she felt guilty having kept this from him, when she had been able to return at any time to see if he had survived. But even if Hermaeus Mora was gone and couldn’t take the opportunity to trap her like he had Miraak, what kind of life would that have been for Darva? She would cheerfully slaughter everyone in Skyrim if it meant keeping her little girl out of Apocrypha.

                “That’s not possible,” he said flatly, and she jerked her gaze back to his face, which had gone cold as granite. He might as well have been wearing his mask.

                She smiled weakly. “That’s what I said, for about two months. Then it started to show…I supposed Apocrypha, or the fight, damaged some of the enchantments I had keeping me from getting pregnant. That” she added dryly, “or it’s your _dovah_ virility coming through.”

                “No,” he said, shaking his head so hard his braid went flying around like a whip. “It cannot be.”

                Ysmir put her hands on her hips. “It’s true. She has your hair, your cheekbones, and she thinks she’s never wrong.”

                Miraak shook out of his mental paralysis long enough to give her an ironic look, which she ignored.

                “Besides,” she added, pursing her lips slightly, “I was in and out of Apocrypha so much that I didn’t…dally as much as I could have. And the one other man I slept with was not a blond Nord.”

                Miraak seemed a bit disgusted. “You slept with an elf, didn’t you?”

                “I’m part elf, egomaniac,” she shot back, then spread her arms wide, “Product of the united Empire, right here!” Although, if one wanted to be truly honest, she was the product of Altmeri depravity…

                The First Dragonborn shook his head, returning to his thoughts. She let him, going over to see what books were on his shelf, although given the four or five that flew off the shelves and into the stacks of the wall, they were not personal choices. They all had writing in them, though, which struck her as unusual.

                “What’s her name?” he finally asked. She turned to gaze down at him, unsure, and he glowered at her, “I have a right to know.”

                “Darva,” she supplied.

                The scowl only deepened, “You named her after an insect?”

                Ysmir scowled right back. “I didn’t know what to name her for a long time. I didn’t even keep my own name, for Talos’s sake!” Not that it really was a name so much as a title.

                “So what, she got stung and you decided it was fate?” he asked scathingly.

                “She wouldn’t eat,” Ysmir admitted, not letting the myriad hopeless feelings, of the horrible thought that she had failed as a mother somehow before she even began, crowd in to flavor her tone. “A friend suggested we add honey to the milk. It worked.”

                Miraak didn’t reply, his mind echoing with a faint, ancient memory of his own mother telling him how he had done much the same thing. The scowl was back. “What Shout?” he asked instead of voicing his thoughts.

                Again she hesitated, and he glared at her, “Bend Will,” she finally admitted.

                She was alarmed when he actually smiled, “Really? She takes after me, then?”

                “Do not get too excited. There is no way I would ever bring her here,” Ysmir said, flames lifting her hair from her shoulders briefly before she caught herself. Divines, but she had no control around this man.

                “I would not expect you to,” he said, a hint of sadness in his voice. He suppressed it swiftly. “Who did she use it on? You?” That would be amusing.

                “Her brother,” the Dovahkiin replied.

                Miraak’s stomach tightened uncomfortably, “You have another child?”

                “Adoptive brother,” she corrected him. “I have seven of them, altogether.”

                He laughed incredulously, “How do you manage?”

                “Very well, thank you,” she replied stiffly. Of course, she had help in the form of Lydia and Inigo, and the twins were around much of the time. “Miraak, I don’t think you’re seeing what the problem is,” she began, but he interrupted her.

                “The problem? Besides discovering I’ve had a daughter for almost six years?” he asked acidly, rising to come stand before her menacingly. “What would you have me think about, after discovering this?”

                Ysmir swallowed, trying not to be obvious about it, and pressed herself back against the bookcase. Too close; he was far too close. Her fight or flight response kicked in and began to argue with the parts of her that wanted nothing more than for him to fill that five-inch gap between them. “If I’m the Last Dragonborn, what does that mean for our daughter?”

                His eyes softened slightly as he thought. “I see your point. I’ll look into it, and set the Seekers to it as well. If there is an answer to be found here, we will find it.”

                She felt the incredible burden of worry ease so much she sagged, finding herself near tears. “Thank you,” she breathed, and an expression of sympathy crossed his features while her eyes were closed.

                “Now,” he said, because he could not just let her go, “You’ve been gone for the better part of a decade, Dragonborn.”

                Pure annoyance filled her expression as she looked up at him, “It was a risk coming to Apocrypha at all! I only suspected that you were alive, and if you were there was still a better than even chance that you’d want to kill me.”

                “I don’t want to kill you. I might, but it’s not what I want,” he replied, and at her questioning look, smiled wickedly. “Here,” he murmured, moving closer, “Let me show you what I want…”

 .

* * *

 .

                Ysmir woke in her bed in Severin Manor no longer sitting up, but laid out neatly on the bed, the Book laying open on her chest, with no tentacles in sight, thank the Divines. Aela was seated cross-legged on a chair a few feet away, head on her hand and a wistful look on her face. “I don’t know who you visited in that Book, but I wish you had shared,” was the first thing she said.

                She blushed, sitting up gingerly. “I wasn’t expecting…” In all honesty, she had suspected her theory of Miraak’s survival was wishful thinking, and that she would have to bargain with the Wretched Abyss to get what she wanted. Now she wasn’t sure what to think, especially after... One thing was for certain, and that was that her life had just gotten much more complicated.

                “So who is he? I should warn you that the twins will be jealous,” Aela cautioned her unnecessarily. “They don’t mind sharing their women with each other, and sometimes with other friends, but they have a thing about men they haven’t met. Especially ones you have to arrange a meeting with in Oblivion,” The Huntress stretched her long legs out before her, toying with the dagger she carried. Her bow was beside her on the chest, arrows beside it, ready to defend in case of intruders.

                The Dragonborn sighed. There was no point in keeping this from Aela; she was intelligent, and would figure it out on her own. Worse, she would share what she surmised, unless told otherwise not to. “Honey-bee’s father.”

                Aela started so badly she cut herself, “Wait, he’s in Apocrypha? What is he, some sort of mage?”

                “It’s Miraak,” Ysmir confessed, stretching out her arms so that her joints popped.

                “The man who sent cultists after you?” she exploded. The dagger flew out of her hand and impaled itself in the chest of the mannequin wearing cultist’s garb.

                “The only cultists who come after me now are the ones in Skyrim with old orders. He’s sort of left them to their own devices since he…well,” there was no easy way to say this, “absorbed Hermaeus Mora and became a Daedric Prince.”

                She had never seen Aela do so credible an imitation of a salmon, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly. “But…Apocrypha? I saw you, here, while your mind was there. You were _not_ _physically there_. How?”

                She shrugged, “The last time I was there I went in my full power; body and mind. Miraak wouldn’t get anything out of killing me, otherwise. Then…well, he couldn’t.” It would be more accurate to say that he decided he didn’t want to, but Ysmir did not want to share that. “Is it strange that I sometimes missed him? I was used to seeing him, the omnipresent enemy that became…I’m not entirely sure what he became. There’s a…pull between us: a bond of two of a kind, stronger than what I feel to dragons, even when I have to slay them and absorb their souls. I really don’t know what to think of him anymore, other than I do not think I could bring myself to kill him, now. We’re certainly not friends, and I’m not sure love comes into it either, but neither sees the other as an enemy.”

                “So you’re letting a mass of Book-born tentacles rip your mind from your body to have hate sex with an ancient man that just became a Daedric Prince?” Aela summed up incredulously.

                “It’s far more complicated than that. He rules Apocrypha now, and that is one of the few places that might have answers about Honey-bee. And he looks anything but ancient,” Ysmir hastened to assure her, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and heading down the hall, resolutely ignoring the way her knees wanted to give out. Rather than being stiff from sitting with the Black Book for so long, her entire body practically throbbed in a way that bordered on obscene. Stupid Morrowind architecture placed the kitchen upstairs, and damn, she needed a drink. She wiped her palms on her thighs as she walked, hoping Aela didn’t notice how sweaty they were, or that she attributed it to going to Apocrypha rather than what had occurred while she was there. She’d had no idea that seeing Miraak again would affect her so strongly. Hadn’t really let herself think about it too much at all, really, other than that she needed answers, and Apocrypha might well be the only place to find them.

                She should have gone elsewhere first. Even dealing with Delphine would be less unsettling than this.

                “Comforting. At least you know Dragonborn age well. You never see a rendering of Tiber Septim as anything other than grand,” Aela joked acidly, letting Ysmir know that there was a lot going left unsaid. Aela only joked like this when she was unsure of the reception of what she wanted to say. Well, that made two of them, and Ysmir was already regretting broaching the subject of Miraak. She’d have to sort her feelings out on her own, she guessed. That was best done away from him, where her judgement wouldn’t be clouded by…whatever was between them.

                “Apparently we age dragon,” Ysmir replied, grabbing a loaf of bread, sticking a hunk of cheese on it and taking a bite. “Half his face is taking on a draconic aspect. The scaly kind, not the glowy kind.”

                Aela finally came to a decision. “I don’t think you ought to talk to him again. I think you should stay away from those Books.”

                “I have. I would have left them in there for eternity were it not for Darva suddenly taking after, well, both of us. The fact that she used the Bend Will Shout first worries me,” she admitted, taking a long drink of sujamma right from the bottle. “I would have felt a lot better if it had been something like Animal Allegiance. There’s so much temptation attached to that Shout, and I’m not sure a five-year-old would bother to fight it.”

                Aela patted her hand comfortingly, her face full of sympathy. “We’ll just have to teach her that she needs to. She’s a good girl; perhaps if you teach her some of the other Shouts she’ll forget about this one.”

                “I doubt it, but I suppose she’ll have to learn sometime. I want to wait until she’s a little older, though. I’d hate doing it, but if worse comes to worse I can use Bend Will on her to make her forget she ever heard the Shout.”

                The Huntress grimaced with the same distaste Ysmir felt, but what was one memory of a child compared to the hundreds she might subvert if she followed in her father’s footsteps? The women sat in silence for a long while, each pondering just this thought. It was Aela that finally broke the quiet. “It’s almost midnight. I’ll pack some travel kits and we can set out to visit the Frostmoon Pack in the morning.”

                “They weren’t too friendly last time I met them,” Ysmir warned.

                Aela bent and kissed the top of her head as if she were a silly child. “That, my dear, is because you are a dragon, not a wolf.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Ysmir heads up to the College of Winterhold to do some more research.


	5. School Reunion

                Their journey from Solstheim was much different from their voyage there. This time they took the _Northern Maiden_ from Raven Rock to Windhelm, and Ysmir and Aela discovered, much to their dismay, that The Huntress and boats did not mix well. Ysmir spent most of the voyage below decks with Aela, working on a Restoration spell that negated motion sickness, with some success. When they finally entered the river that would lead them to the docks at Windhelm, however, Aela opted to jump off the ship and swim to land rather than remain aboard a few more hours. Ysmir had brought some water-sensitive material back, and told her she’d meet her at the Windhelm stables.

                The Nord woman was looking much more like her usual self when Ysmir finally caught up with her, after hiring a courier to tell Lydia that she was back in Skyrim, and would be heading to the College of Winterhold before going south. Aela groaned to learn they were going to consort with a group of mages, but cheered up considerably when she learned that she probably wouldn’t be allowed inside the walls of the College, and should just remain in the inn, where she could get a few bounties from the innkeeper to work off her boredom and earn money for the Companions.

                The journey from Windhelm to Winterhold was fairly uneventful, save for some mudcrabs, some trolls, a couple of frostbite spiders, and the ever-present bandits. Oh, and a few necromancers and some vampires impersonating Vigilants of Stendarr. Uneventful for her, she supposed. No dragons attacked, anyway. At least they were spared being hounded by wolves, as the creatures left Aela alone the moment they smelled her.

                “Isn’t this wonderful, Ysmir?” Aela enthused. “The fresh air, the bracing Skyrim breeze, the blue sky above us and the glory of the hunt!”

                “Yes, delightful,” Ysmir replied, flicking her hands to try to fling some of the spider goop off the arms of her fluffy Skaal coat. She never should have introduced The Huntress to exploding arrows.

                Winterhold looked as wretched as it always did, Ysmir reflected scornfully. In her opinion, the Hold held too dearly to the past, bemoaning the Great Collapse and blaming the College for all their woes rather than rebuilding and trying to move forward. They could be great again, if they cared to even try to repair the damaged houses and bring in more citizens. She knew how she would do it; there were plenty of farmers and other honest citizens homeless from dragon attacks and the war, enough to swell Winterhold to at least half its former size. If they were still worried about a second collapse (in which case, they should have moved away from the coast), there was plenty of empty land on the short walk between the moldering town and Saarthal, or even rebuilding the ancient city itself. Instead, they wailed against the mages and let their city rot around them. Pitiful.

                Aela stopped to examine the College, hands on her hips and head tilted to the side. Ysmir didn’t see how she wasn’t freezing in her ancient Nordic armor, for the wind whipped their hair around their shoulders and drove snow into every inch of clothing. “Impressive,” The Huntress finally said, “I’ll see you in four days,” she added, heading into the inn.

                Ysmir sighed, facing the College and straightening her shoulders. Plenty of others had attained their Mastery and left, as she had, but she was still uncertain of her welcome, as she had left without a word after a rather embarrassing incident.

.

* * *

 .

_Nine years ago…_

 

                A knock on the door startled her, and she yelled for Lydia to answer it. She was almost finished with this potion…

                “My Thane?” Lydia poked her head in the newly built Alchemy Lab, face uncertain, “There are a couple of men here to see you.”

                “What’s wrong with them?” Ysmir asked absently, in response to the housecarl’s confliction. She strained a couple of steeped thistle leaves through a fine mesh, trying to get every drop she could into the alembic.

                “They asked if this was a school for mages,” she replied, and Ysmir laughed at the thought.         “I’ll be down in a moment,” she said, waiting for the final drops to drip into the alembic and lowering the flame. “Give them some mead in the meantime.”

                Some minutes later, she entered the main hall, wiping her hands on a rag, only to stop in surprise when she saw who awaited her: J’zargo and Onmund, looking extraordinarily miserable. “What in the name of Julianos are you two doing here?” she burst out, unable to fathom what had brought them to her home on the other end of Skyrim. How did they even manage to find her through the swamp?

                The two Apprentices glanced at each other, and finally Onmund came forward. “We…we know why you left the College,” he said in a rush.

                Ysmir lifted an eyebrow, “Do you now?”

                “Yes, and we wanted you to know that it’s our fault. Ancano…he was being such a…well, you know. So when one of Brelyna’s attempts at Alchemy made something that was like an extremely potent wine, we slipped it to him. Whatever he did or said to you, it was because he was so drunk he was out of his mind. He doesn’t even remember what he did. He woke up curled around the statue of Shalidor’s foot, demanding to know how he got there.”

                She stared at them for a moment before bursting out laughing in relief so keen it made her giddy. He didn’t remember! Thank all Eight Divines, Talos, and whatever Daedra had possessed him. “Is _that_ why that moron kissed me? I thought he was drunk, but I really couldn’t picture him letting himself get to that state.”

                The poor Nord boy paled in dismay; “He _kissed_ you?”

                Ysmir snorted. “He thought I was someone else. The only reason he isn’t sporting a lot of burn marks right now is because I didn’t want the Thalmor to blame the Arch-Mage.” She turned away, busying herself at the table behind her until she could get her expression under control. Ancano had scared her, though he hadn’t been actively trying to hurt her. He had called her by the family name of her Thalmor grandfather, having apparently found traces of that family in her features, in her magic. She had almost killed him in fright that he would contact The Bastard and have her sent home again. Only the realization that he had just, in his drunken state, gotten over his prejudice enough to make the connection had stayed her hand. Knocking him out had been child’s play. She’d gone through his things, realizing that he hadn’t contacted anyone with his suspicions, and determined that it was better to leave him in place than risk an inquiry into his disappearance. That was why she had left the College; fear that he would remember, or make the connection again. Her grandfather’s family was an important one—she was never even able to comprehend how important until she left. Even marriage to a mixed-raced bastard of that family would bring connections any of the Dominion would find advantageous.

                “J’zargo would not mind taking the blame, this once,” the Khajiit growled, much to her surprise.

                She smiled at him fondly, “I appreciate the offer, J’zargo, but that’s not the only reason I left the College. Surely you noticed that my old room is empty? I attained my Mastery, and they moved me upstairs.  Also…” she trailed off, wondering what all to tell them. “I have…a destiny I have to fulfill.”

                “What do you mean?” Onmund asked, perplexed and worried.

                “It’s not something I want the rest of the College to know, for various reasons,” she said, heading outside. “You know I only came to Skyrim a year ago, but it’s been a rather hectic year. You see, I found out that I’m…not quite as ordinary as I thought.”

                “I never thought you were ordinary,” the Nord burst out, and Ysmir decided his little crush on her was getting too strong—another reason not to go back.

                “I thought you were,” J’zargo admitted, his tail lashing restlessly. “You were not competitive at all.”

                Ysmir laughed. “J’zargo, you are about to get jealous,” she teased, turned toward a pile of hay she had stacked up as being too rotten for thatch, and Shouted _“Yol!”_ Predictably, the pile went up with an impressive explosion of flame; Ysmir was rather proud of herself, for Paarthurnax had only just taught her that Shout.

                The wide eyes of the two Apprentices were all she could have wished. “So, you see, I’m going to be a little too busy for school.”

.

* * *

.

                She had expected to meet Faralda at the gate, and she wasn’t disappointed. “Cross the bridge at your own peril! The way is dangerous and the gate will not open. You shall not gain entry!”

                “You’re still toting that line?” Ysmir asked with a smile, throwing her hood back.

                The Altmer—one of the few of that race that Ysmir did not actively dislike—blinked in surprise. “So you return to us, Noyoki,” she replied.

                Ysmir shook her head. “I no longer go by that name, Faralda. I have found one of my own.”

                The elven woman smiled slightly; she was among the few that knew “Noyoki” was what an Altmer put on a form to hold the place of a name when one could not be found. There were many elven gravestones with the term “Noyoki” emblazoned upon them. Ysmir had told Faralda—and, eventually, Ancano, who’s attention had been pricked at the familiar, if somewhat morbid, Aldmeri word—that it was the name given to her by the Thalmor woman that had run the orphanage she had grown in. She had stuck to that lie ever since, as it seemed to work fairly well.

                The woman stepped aside and let the Dragonborn enter. The walkway was as perilous as Ysmir remembered, and she wondered absently if the Arch-Mage left it like that on purpose to weed out the cowardly before they even entered the College proper.

                “What name have you chosen for yourself, then?” the mage asked, falling slightly behind her as they traversed the most crumbled part of the walkway.

                “Ysmir,” she replied with a smile, looking back as they stepped upon a more stable section.

                Faralda looked nonplussed. “That is a strange title to take for yourself, especially surrounded by Nords who might take offense.”

                “I did not take it for myself; I was finally adopted,” she replied with a laugh. “It took me seventeen years, but I finally gained a family and a name.”

                “Perhaps it is appropriate, given your talent with fire,” the older woman finally said, with a small smile.

                “They certainly thought so,” Ysmir replied, “Although that is not the reason they Named me thus. So what has happened since I have been away?”

                The Altmer sighed as the conversation went back to what was, for her, solid footing. “We finally found a way to bring the Artifact from Saarthal to the Collage safely, although not everyone is happy with that. We have been studying it, and come up with very little information, despite the seven years we have been searching. Urag says it is the Eye of Magnus, but other than that we know almost nothing about it. The Synod demanded we hand it over, but had no legal authority to take it. They’ve been coming back every few months to examine it and grumble. As for the Psijics, they haven’t been seen since Ancano marched that one that came to see you out the door.”

                “And Ancano? He seemed fairly interested in it; surely he has written to his colleagues and gotten something to share.” Really, she doubted the Thalmor agent would share anything he knew unless under duress, but what she truly wanted to know was if he was still at the College.

                Evidently Faralda shared that opinion. “That man wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire,” she said scornfully.

                “He might, if you were already a corpse. Just out of spite, mind,” Ysmir said. “Does he remember what happened the night I left? He seemed fairly inebriated at the time.”

                Faralda looked worried, “What with everything else that was going on, I wasn’t sure that was when you left. He didn’t threaten you, did he? I know he has never seen your entry into the College as anything other than the Arch-Mage’s incompetence, despite your obvious talent for magery.”

                “No, he didn’t threaten me,” she assured the other woman flatly.

                “You have been gone a long time,” Faralda said after an uncomfortable silence in which the pair halted awkwardly at the end of the walkway. “What kept you away so long?”

                “I meant to come back,” Ysmir replied honestly, “If only to visit. Just…life happened. And—no offense—the College isn’t the kind of place I want to bring any young child. I’d be afraid they’d manage to blow themselves up or fall over a railing.”

                “Oh! You didn’t tell me that you got married!” Faralda exclaimed happily. Apparently marriage was a perfectly acceptable excuse for not coming to visit for nine years.

                “I never married,” Ysmir objected hastily, waving her hands slightly as if to ward off the thought.

                The elf looked thrown for a moment, then outraged, “If that man forced himself upon you—”

                “No! No, nothing like that!” Ysmir cried, eyes wide. It had never even occurred to her that Faralda would assume that Ancano had raped her. “I adopted several children over the years. It seemed I couldn’t go anywhere without kicking up an orphan!”

                “And you being an orphan yourself…yes, I could see why you would begin collecting them. I still remember that litter of kittens you snuck into the Hall of Attainment," the older mage reminisced, eyes dancing.

                “And how they would follow J’zargo around!” Ysmir laughed. “Are they still here?”

                Faralda nodded. “I have one, the Arch-Mage kept another, and Tolfdir took the third, but they still follow J’zargo around when he visits.”

                She laughed again, then shivered as a gust of cold air snuck under her cloak and slithered down her spine like an ice drake. “Well, no more putting this off, I suppose. Thank you, Faralda, for welcoming me back.”

                “Plenty have gone into the world after finishing their education,” the elf assured her warmly, putting a hand on her arm, “We only wondered that you left without saying goodbye.”

                “I hate goodbyes,” Ysmir said honestly. “Back then, I assumed everyone else felt the same.”

                With that, she turned and began walking into the courtyard. Faralda didn’t follow, so she assumed the woman was returning to her post. Mirabelle glanced up at her, then down to the book she was reading before doing a double-take. Ysmir smiled and waved, and the Master Wizard closed the book and approached. Before she reached her, however, Ancano walked out of the Hall of Elements and nearly ran her over. He scowled when he saw her and opened his mouth to speak, but Ysmir silenced him how she had always longed to; she punched him in the jaw so hard he spun, slipped on the ice, and landed on his knees.

                “That’s for what you did the night I left, you pervert!” she declared, stepping around him like she couldn’t bear his presence (which really, was fairly close to the truth), and left him and Mirabelle wondering just what he had done the night he couldn’t remember. Now, she hoped, he would actively avoid her during the rest of her stay. And everyone else was sure to remember and wonder about a night he would rather pretend never happened.

                Her smugness was short-lived, for when she entered the Hall of Elements she was struck dumb by the giant, glowing sphere rotating above the middle well of the room. It spun lazily, emitting a strange, unsettling humming noise, the sigils engraved along the black bands writhing slightly. Faintly, she heard someone lecturing, and ducked into The Arcanaeum before anyone noticed her. Climbing the stairs carefully, in case someone was about to turn the corner with their nose in a book instead of paying attention to where they were going, she emerged into the library with a feeling of contentment for the sight and smell of all those books. Once, she had briefly entertained the idea of succeeding Urag as Librarian, but had quickly abandoned that notion when she realized just how bored she would be.

                An image of Miraak, alone for millennia amongst the stacks of Apocrypha, entered her mind unwillingly, and she forced it away with a violent toss of her head. The movement—and undoubtedly, the flash of red—caught the orc’s attention, and a moment passed before he called, “Didn’t think I would see you again. Rule still stands; you damage any of these books, and I will have you torn apart by angry Atronachs.”

                She laughed, “Why Urag, I’m touched! I didn’t know you missed your book fetcher so much!”

                “I’ve had four or five different book fetchers since you left, and three of them actually came back!” he countered, actually coming out from behind his counter to greet her. “What’s this?” he asked, nodding to the bag she held.

                “I was just at Raven Rock, and it occurred to me that you might not have all these,” she replied, handing him the bag of books, both common and rare, that she had brought from Severin Manor.

                “Hmm,” he said meditatively, going back to his accustomed place to sort through the volumes. Needless to say, there were no Black Books in there, but Ysmir had a way of stumbling across uncommon writings, including ancient journals, and she could never help but pick them up. Perhaps that was what had grabbed the attention of Mora in the first place.

                “So, Urag, I need to do some research on the prophesies of the Last Dragonborn. Not the new stuff, mind, the really old writings I couldn’t find elsewhere.”

                He looked up, eyes narrowed, “Was this a sort of bribe?” he asked gesturing to the books.

                She rolled her eyes, “You’ve let me read rare books before, Urag. I don’t intend to take any of them out of The Arcanaeum. If I want the knowledge elsewhere, I’ll make notes, as always.”

                “See that you don’t spill any ink on them, then” he replied, walking over to a case and simply opening it for her to see, pointing to a section in the middle, just above eye height. Well, her eye height. Urag had to look down at it. “This entire shelf is nothing but writings on the prophesy of Alduin’s return. Some of it is drivel, some of it not. There are one or two new books that should interest you, too. Especially this one,” he said, taking one down and handing it to her, “written by a man called Esbern, one of the last of the Blades. He personally met the Dragonborn. Describes her as a young woman with red hair and purple eyes.”

                She gazed at him soberly. “Who else knows? I don’t want to be studied or stared at, Urag. That’s the reason I never mentioned it when I was here. Well, that and I didn’t quite believe it myself, yet.”

                “I didn’t tell anyone, but I’m not the only person who read that book, Noyo—no, you go by Ysmir now. Ysmir, the Dragon of the North,” he snorted a little.

                “The Greybeards Named me,” she replied with a shrug.

                “What you call yourself is irrelevant; Dragonborn or not, take care of these books or I’ll have your hide to re-cover them.”

                The corner of her mouth twitched upward. “Yes sir.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: A conversation with a floating ball of woe.


	6. The Augur of Dunlain

                It seemed this was only the first of the books Esbern was planning on writing about the prophesies and how they were fulfilled. He had not yet begun to write on her experiences, only what was written on Alduin’s wall, and what texts survived from that time. She had copied down a few Word Walls for him to translate, ones that had something interesting to say (to him, anyway) and he drew some rather intriguing conclusions from them. Unfortunately, he had only finished one book so far; she would still need to speak with him. Not that she minded Esbern. Actually, she was rather fond of the old geezer, and he (ironically) reminded her a lot of Paarthurnax. It was Delphine she couldn’t stand.

                The door to The Arcanaeum opened, and Ysmir tensed without meaning to, looking up to see Brelyna standing uncertainly in the stone arch that marked the entrance. Ysmir gave her a warm smile. “Brelyna! It’s so good to see you!” she exclaimed, putting the book aside to go give the Dunmer a welcoming hug, which the young woman returned hesitantly.

                “I wasn’t sure you were really back,” the woman replied. Ysmir was glad to see that the elf had started to wear her hair down, rather in that quite unflattering pair of buns she used to.

                “Just visiting, I’m afraid,” Ysmir revealed, and felt guilty when the Dunmer’s shoulders drooped. “I see you’ve attained your Mastery,” she noted, causing the young elf’s head to rise in pride.

                “Yes,” she said, looking down at her robes and tugging a bit on the hem of the hood. “I decided to focus on Alteration, although I have recently started to study Conjuration with more enthusiasm.”

                “You’re not going to turn me into a cow again, are you?” Ysmir teased, leading the elf back to the chair nearest the one she had taken. She had to move a stack of books before they sat, and cast around a moment before finding a cushion that was unused or not worn flat from being a book prop.

                “Oh, no!” Brelyna laughed, relaxing, and began to fill Ysmir in on what she had been doing. To Ysmir’s slight consternation, there was much of spell craft and little personal, other than a brief fling with Onmund. That affair had ended when he attained Mastery and was invited to be personal wizard to a rich man in his home town.

                “What about the new apprentices? Surely you’ve made some new friends?” she persisted, but it seemed that the shy girl had holed herself up in her studies.

                No wonder she was so glad to see Ysmir.

                The Dragonborn went to her temporary bed in the Hall of Countenance that night feeling frustrated and guilty. By all accounts, she should be the Last Dragonborn. Every part of the prophesy said “last,” not “second to last,” or “one of the last.” She had poured through all the books The Arcanaeum had on the subject and had a great sheaf of notes, but so far there was nothing to help her discover the fate of her daughter.

                Also plaguing her was her shy friend’s loneliness. She already longed to be away from here and heading home to her family, but she felt she must do _something_ about Brelyna before she left. She turned over, snuggling her face into the pillow and missing the twins’ warmth, frowning at the wall beyond the darkness.

                Footsteps outside the doorless alcove made her freeze, deliberately relaxing her body and making her breathing even and slow. Faintly seen through her eyelashes, a figure paused outside, silhouetted by the mage fire in the central well. Whoever it was seemed to consider her a moment, then move on, probably deciding to talk to her in the morning rather than wake her.

                Ysmir let her eyes shut fully. She still had much to do, and really should be sleeping. Unfortunately, she was remembering why she had spent so many nights away from the College while she lived there, despite the warm bed and having a roof over her head. The air in the Halls felt so close, and the rooms were so quiet. When the lights were turned low, it felt like a much smaller space. She rolled onto her back, spreading her limbs wide to assure herself that there were no confining walls in touching distance, closing in and trapping her. So assured, she forced herself to relax, concentrating on each set of muscles individually until some of the tension left. Long before she was finished, she was asleep.

 

* * *

 

                Tolfdir came to get her the next morning, and she had the new pleasure of talking to her old mentor as an equal as they ate breakfast in a little alcove in the Hall of Countenance. He queried her on what she had meant by calling Ancano a pervert, but she pressed her lips together tightly and refused to speak on it, which she hoped would drive the snobbish elf mad. She did, however, assure the elderly man that she took no harm from the Thalmor. This particular one, at any rate.

                After breakfast, it was time to make a visit to the Midden.

                The Midden was a dank, cold maze of crumbling brickwork and cobwebs, held together by ice and ancient mortar, and filled with ice wraiths and draugr. Ysmir had always hated coming down here, although she had done so often to speak with someone peculiar, even by her standards.  

                “You come again.” The disembodied voice echoed through the cold stone hall, making the icicles shiver.

                “Why do you always start talking before I’ve even reached you?” Ysmir complained, pulling a cobweb from her hair. Apparently, judging from the number of frostbite spiders she’d had to kill, no one had been down her since her last visit.

                Somehow, he heard her. “I know of your coming. I know much that is to come, with no hope of changing it. To know such things is to despair.”

                “Same old bundle of optimism, aren’t you?” she finally reached his door, walking in to confront one of the College’s greatest secrets; the Augur of Dunlain. He had no body, anymore, but took the form of a transparent orb of energy with shafts of white-blue light delineating the boundaries, within which tiny sparks twirled and twinkled in a double-helix. For some reason, the members of the Collage hated talking about him, but she found the melancholy spirit good company, when not steeped in despondency.

                “You have done much since you last came to see me, Dragonborn,” he replied, a note of respect in his voice.

                “Friends call me Ysmir, Augie,” she replied with a grin, covering the stone stool she had brought there so long ago with fire until it was warm to the touch and she could sit on it without freezing.

                “Ysmir. You come seeking advice on your daughter, but I have none to give. The future is uncertain, my friend, and has been since you last returned from Apocrypha six years ago. Your fate was to lose to the First Dragonborn, or he to lose to you. It was not intended that you join, although I wondered if you might.”

                She sat up like he had stuck her with a pin, “What do you mean, you wondered?”

                “You are ruled by your passions, _Dovahkiin_ , as is the Dragon Priest, as are all dragons. You are the only female of your kind remaining, and he the only male of your kind that you would meet. The draw between those suspected to be _Dovahkiinne_ was once a well-known secret, of which stories were whispered but never written. Like the werewolves you have taken into your life, the bonds between those of your kind are strong. The Companions could not sit back and watch the Silver Hand slaughter their brother and sister wolves, even if the Hand had left them alone.”

Ysmir scowled, thinking uncomfortably about her draw to the First Dragonborn, “Didn’t stop him from trying to steal my soul for his escape,” she pointed out bitterly.

“If he had killed you, Ysmir, Miraak would have destroyed himself past redemption, and lost a part of himself forever. And you, had you been victorious, would have withered, unable to bear what you had done. The Daedra would have taken you, and you would have walked forever amongst the tomes of Apocrypha, a shade of yourself.”

                Ysmir shuddered violently. “But what of Darva? Do you see her facing Alduin? Will the World Eater return?”

                “I do not see Darva at all.”

                The sentence caught her breath in her throat and stilled her. He didn’t see Darva? The Augur must have sensed her distress, for he added, “I do not see her future. I can see her past, the life she has already lived, and I can see her now, being held in Farkas’s arms as she cries over a skinned knee. I have watched her off and on for all her life, Ysmir. She is fascinating; a life I cannot see until it unfolds. Rest assured that I would find a way to contact you if that ever were to change.”

                “Thank you,” she said gratefully, rising. She never was able to stay down here too long; it was far too cold. She had already instinctively invoked her flame cloak in defense. “I must go. I can’t feel my toes anymore.”

                “I see what is in your mind, Ysmir. I will meet with your Dark Elf friend. I do not know if we will be able to talk as you and I once did; the other future I cannot see is my own.”

                “You’ll get along fine, Augie,” Ysmir said with a smile. “I cannot see into your mind or into the future, but I know two lonely souls when I see them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Darva steals a horse and needs to be rescued.


	7. First Meeting

                Darva missed her momma. She sat listlessly at the dinner table, kicking her feet, while the boys argued over her head.

                “Enough!” Papa Vilkas roared. The bickering ceased immediately, and Darva felt a pang of raw envy for Papa Vil’s ability to do that. If she were still allowed to say _“Gol Hah”_ she probably could have gotten them to behave, but those were bad words now, and she didn’t want to get a spanking.

                “Cheer up, Honey-bee,” Sofie whispered as she put a bowl of venison stew in front of her youngest sister. “Runa and I made boiled cream treats for desert.”

                Well, who wouldn’t that cheer up? She finished up her dinner in a much better frame of mind, not even minding that Blaise and Alesan kept whispering to each other, as if she were not stuck right between them and could hear every word they said.  

                After dinner she helped Lucia clean up the table and wash the dishes, mind still whirling furiously with what the boys were talking about. Finally, she ventured, “Don’t you think Momma’s been gone an awful long time?”

                Lucia stopped and looked at her. “You heard that messenger that came yesterday; Momma had to go to Raven Rock. That’s a long way away! And she has to go somewhere else before she even thinks of coming home.”

                “I wonder why she left so quickly,” Darva wondered aloud. “I mean, do you know what she was going to do?”

                Lucia shrugged, using the gesture to wipe some of the suds off her cheek with her shoulder. “Whatever it was, it must be important. She hasn’t left like that since the first time she had to go to Raven Rock, after all those funny-robed people with the scary bone masks attacked.”

                “Hmm,” was all she said, gaze down so Lucia couldn’t read her expression, though she could see the outlines of her round, worried face in the tub. The soap bubbles sparkled with rainbows in the light from the window, like the pretty ribbons of color that made waves across the Skyrim night. “I want to go outside,” Darva stated after a while, staring at the suds-covered spoon in her hand.

                “All that’s left is pots, and you’re not big enough to scrub them really well anyway. You go; I’ll finish up,” Lucia told her.

                Darva gave her a look of undying gratitude as only a five-year-old could and shot out of the kitchen like the bee she was named for.

                Alesan and Blaise were down by the lake, trying to hit a fish with the short, light bows the twins had gifted the boys with last Midwinter. Runa had gotten one as well, but Darva had gotten a new doll like Lucia and Sofie. She was a little put out by that, because as much as she loved her doll she had two already, and no bow. Maybe if she asked Auntie Aela to teach her it would get back to the Papas that she wanted one, even if she was too little to fight.

                Quietly as she could she came up behind her brothers, hoping to scare them into getting a bit wet.

                “—don’t think she’s coming back,” Alesan was saying.

                “She always comes back. She’s not like…like our parents. She’s the Dragonborn. She can face anything!” Blaise argued.

                “She’s been gone a long time. I think something bad has happened, and this time it might be too much for her,” the Redguard boy said fearfully.

                She halted, fear making her freeze as her stomach tied itself in a hard, tight knot. “That’s not true!” Honey-bee shrieked, startling both boys so badly that they slipped. Blaise caught himself, but Alesan tumbled into the water.

                “Oh, no!” Blaise cried, reaching down to help his brother. Only then did Darva see that the fish they were shooting at wasn’t a trout, but one of the feared slaughterfish. The slaughterfish darted forward and caught Alesan’s boot before he could get all the way out of the water, and the boy yelled in pain.

                “Kill it! Kill it!” he shouted, kicking at the fish with his other foot as it held tightly to his boot. It gazed at them with beady eyes and wriggled, eliciting a cry of pain from the boy it held.

                Blaise darted in and stomped on the fish as hard as he could until it went limp. Alesan gingerly pulled his foot from the boot, leaving it in the jaws of the dead fish. “Look what you did, Darva!” the Breton accused, watching the skin around the punctures swell rapidly under Alesan’s horrified and fascinated gaze.

                “It…it’s alright,” Alesan said tightly, his face scrunched up and a few tears leaking out. “Not her fault.”

                “Yes it is!” Blaise argued, angrily wrenching the boot from the dead jaws.

                Heavy footfalls heralded the arrival of one of the Papas. “What happened?” Farkas asked, running up with Aventus on his heels.

                “Darva made Alesan fall into the water, when she saw there was a slaughterfish in there!” Blaise cried, pointing at the little girl.

                “I did not! It was an accident!” Darva yelled back, tears leaking down her face as surly as Alesan’s. She felt terrible; she hadn’t meant to get her brother hurt, no matter what awful things he was saying.

                “Why were you sneaking up behind us, then?” he demanded.

                “I didn’t know there was a _slaughter_ fish!”

                “Both of you, stop arguing,” Farkas ordered. “Aventus, go get Lydia and have Runa boil some water. A little bandaging and some health potions and he’ll be good as new,” he said, lifting the boy and starting up the hill.

                “You’re such a stupid crybaby, Darva!” Blaise growled.

                “I am not!” she blubbered, sniffling.

                “Look what you did! And you did something to me too,” he added, lowering his voice as he toyed with the ring he always wore on a chain around his neck, “just before Momma left. I bet she left because of you. You’re turning into a spoiled brat that does bad things to people, and she couldn’t take it anymore, so she left.”

                “That’s not true!” the child shrieked.

                “Is so! You get everything you want, all the time! You get out of chores, and people do things for you; you’ve never done a full, hard day’s work in your life the way the rest of us have. You’re just a whiny little baby, and she was sick of it, so she went away.”

                “I wish you had fallen into the lake instead of Alesan!” Darva yelled, then turned and ran down the road, away from the house. Blaise huffed and crossed his arms, shoving his father’s ring back into the neckline of his shirt and refusing to run after her like everyone else did. He trudged back to the house. It wasn’t like a five-year-old could run very far, after all.

                Darva ran until her legs couldn’t anymore, bending and placing her hands on her knees as she breathed deeply, glancing about. There was no one around, but a clomping from up the road made her hide behind some trees, just in case. A horse came wandering around, a pretty creature with a cream coat and empty saddle. Darva peeked out cautiously, but there was no one else around. “Hello,” she told him, walking cautiously up to him. Momma had a horse—a big one with black spots on him called Jughead—and Darva had been allowed to sit on his back as Ysmir led him around the house. She liked horses. This one seemed to like her, but Darva knew that could change if it was frightened. Papa Vil had explained it to her quite seriously. She thought a moment.

                _“Kaan,”_ she said quickly, hoping she said it right. Ysmir always said that when wild wolves came to fight with Precious. The last time, Darva had been amazed to see ribbons of light pass from her mother to her when she asked about it, but Ysmir had been holding Precious back and hadn’t seemed to notice.

                The horse put his nose in her chest and made a “wuuulllf!” noise that made her giggle. She looked back down the road, toward the house that was obscured by trees at this distance. “I don’t want to go back,” she said sadly, “Blaise is right; it is my fault Alesan got hurt.” She wiped leaking eyes on her sleeve, then gave the horse a watery smile. “Let’s go look for Momma. Whenever she needs to fix the house, she goes this way. There’s a mill there, and they’re probably Momma’s friends, or why would she buy from them?”

                The horse seemed to think this was a grand idea, for he stopped to eat some grass right underneath a tall ledge of ground that Darva could easily climb and use to hop onto his back. He snorted, but responded when she tugged on one side of the reins to get him going in the direction that she wanted. She couldn’t get them untied from the pommel, but just tugging them individually seemed to work, for the horse broke into a canter that seemed amazingly fast to the girl, blowing her curls out behind her.

                Not too much further down the road and she spotted a strange stack of stones just under the trees. Beside it were some pretty purple flowers she had only ever seen once, through the door to her mother’s Alchemy lab. She had longed to put them in a vase, but they hadn’t had any stems. These ones did, and she thought maybe if she brought them to Alesan he would like them, and wouldn’t be mad at her. 

                She directed the horse closer to the pile, which had another ledge close by that she would be able to hop onto. A strange creaking sound reached them, and the horse froze, then fidgeted nervously. There was a flash of something behind the stones and the beast shied just as Darva was trying to get off. Slipping sideways out of the saddle, she landed with an “oof!” that drove the air out of her lungs, and landed badly on her wrist, which hurt a lot. The child wailed in protest.

                The creaking was joined by rustling, and she looked up and froze. A skeleton stood by the stones, holding a sword and shield and looking around. The creaking came from bones rubbing together as it, impossibly, moved. The little girl held very, very still.

                The horse wasn’t so smart.

                Another dead thing rounded the rise of land beside the road and began attacking the horse, which reared and plunged at it. Instinctively, Darva turned her head to see.

                The hollow eye sockets of first skull fell on her, and it raced toward her with surprising speed. Darva scooted backwards as fast as she could, not even having time to stand up and run. The rusted blade of the creature sliced just where she had been.

                Clumsily pulling herself to her feet, Darva turned to flee, but the dead person swung his shield arm, catching her across the back. She cried out, falling forward and catching herself with her good hand against a pine tree. Turning, she saw the skeleton raise its sword, and screamed, hiding her face against the bark.

_“Zun Haal Viik!”_

                Darva looked up in surprise at the unfamiliar, male voice that Shouted just like her momma. The sword shot from the skeleton’s grasp, taking its arm with it. A man rushed it from behind her, cutting upward and shattering the bones from each other with an ugly, scary greenish sword that writhed in some places, like it had worms on it.

                The bones fell to pieces and collapsed. One of them rolled to her feet and she kicked it away with a squeamish little shriek.

                The man turned to her, and Darva forgot to be squeamish.

                He was terrifying. He wore strange, grey-brown robes with gold dragon bones, and an awful mask that reminded her both of a picture of a squid in one of her mother’s books, and the little black pincer-beetles that ate dead things. The icky sword was still unsheathed in his hand.

                He took a step toward her, and Darva panicked.

                _“Fus Ro Dah!”_ she Shouted as hard as she could.

                 The man staggered backward, nearly knocked off his feet. Darva stared. She had seen her momma send a giant flying by yelling at it with those words. Had she done them wrong?

                The man laughed. It wasn’t a mean laugh, and he didn’t sound mad at her. “Well done, little one!” he crowed, shaking his head. He reached up and removed the mask, and his face was funny, but he was smiling, and Darva had the strange feeling she should know him. Something in him called to her, like when Grandfather visited and called her _“Kulaas.”_

                The man knelt in front of her, and she saw half his face was covered in scales. “Are you hurt?” he asked her, obviously concerned. He reached up and wiped the tears from her cheeks with the thumb of his glove, examining her face as if looking for something unnamed.

                She nodded, holding her wrist to her chest. “Let me see,” he commanded and, slowly, she held out her wrist, which was swelling as rapidly as Alesan’s foot. Gently, he prodded it, which hurt and she snatched it back, looking at him distrustfully. “Forgive me; I only wanted to see if it was broken. I do not believe it is. May I see it again? I promise not to touch.”

                Gazing at him suspiciously, ready to snatch her hand back the moment he even looked like he wanted to poke it again, Darva complied. Then the man held one of his hands near it, and it began to glow with familiar golden light. The light moved to surround her wrist, and the swelling immediately vanished. She twisted it experimentally, the man giving her a rueful look as she did so.

                “That is not a spell I have used in a very long time,” he said. “This is not how I imagined we’d meet.”

                “Who are you?” Darva asked, gazing up at him.

                He smiled, a real, happy smile that brought an answering one from her, and said “You may call me Bormah, little one.”

                “I’m Darva,” she said, holding out her hand like she had been taught when meeting new people. “But people call me Honey-bee.”

                “A sweet little girl with a surprising sting,” he chuckled, taking her hand and kissing the air above it, like heroes did when they met a great lady in the stories. Darva giggled. “I admit, it fits you better than I thought it would.”

                “How do you know about me?” Darva asked, curious.

                “I…know your mother,” he replied. “She talked to me about you.”

                “She did? Have you seen her? Is she alright?” Darva burst out, looking up at him anxiously.

                “She is very well,” her new friend assured her. “But she would not be happy to hear that I came here to meet you. It’s going to have to be a secret between us, alright?”

                She wrinkled her nose. “Papa Vilkas says I’m too little to be allowed to keep secrets.”

                Bormah scowled, “Well ‘Papa Vilkas’ obviously doesn’t know women very well.”

                “How come you can Shout?” Darva asked curiously, stepping out into the weak sunlight. Bormah stepped back to allow her room. He had a curious, transparent quality about him that made her feel like maybe she was dreaming this, but the day felt real, and her wrist had hurt, and she usually didn’t dream smells along with sights. “Momma can yell like that, but Lydia can’t, and neither can Papa Vil or Papa Farkas.”

                “Papa Vil _and_ Papa Farkas?” he repeated, his face slightly shocked.

                Darva giggled. “They’re twins. They stay with us a lot of the time. Papa Farkas is a lot of fun, but Papa Vilkas seems to think all fun things are bad. Unless they’re boring after a while, like sewing. He says I can do more things like learning to fight when I’m older, but right now I’m too small and it stinks.”

                “And…do Papa Vilkas, Papa Farkas, and your mother all share a room?” he asked after a moment of thought.

                “Of course,” she said matter-of-factly, because she had to share a room and so did everyone else; even Lydia shared a room with the bard, when they had one, so why shouldn’t her momma share a room with the Papas? She giggled again, “That’s a funny shade of purple you’re turning.”

                Bormah muttered something under his breath as Darva was reminded of the purple flowers that had pulled her attention over this way to begin with, and she walked over and reached out to pick one when Bormah’s hand clamped around her wrist, tightly at first but then abruptly gentling. “Don’t touch that, Little Bee. Those are nightshade flowers; they are beautiful but poisonous, and they grow on the graves of the dead.”

                Snatching her hand back, she looked aghast at the flowers. “So someone is buried here? On the side of the road? That’s awful!”

                He gave her a curious look, and it wasn’t her imagination; she could see right through him. “Are…are you dead?” she asked fearfully, backing up a bit.

                He shook his head. “I am not dead, I am just…somewhere else. I was able to send a part of myself here when you were in trouble, but I cannot stay long. Still,” he looked down at his hands, then around the gravesite, “this is more, much more than I was able to do before.” He smiled down at her, and she felt warm inside, “I have you to thank for that, I think.”

                “What did I do?” Darva asked, surprised.

                “You simply are, Little Bee,” he said fondly, reaching down as if to lift her, but his hands went straight through. He frowned and looked sad for a moment. “Come, we must get you on the path home,” he said, walking around the rise.

                The horse was shaking in place, surrounded by bones. Darva knew how it felt. At the sight of them it neighed in fright and reared, but Bormah simply said _“Kaan Drem Ov,”_ and it stopped, shivering, its golden hide twitching. Bormah took a deep breath, as if he was steeling himself for something, and for a moment he seemed solid again. In that moment he reached down and lifted her onto the horse as she squeaked in surprise. “Be safe, Little Bee,” he said, “and ride straight home.” He was disappearing faster than before, and Darva reached out, not wanting him to go. “Remember, this is our little secret.”

                Then he was gone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Ysmir comes home.


	8. Something Peculiar

                Ysmir frowned and watched Braith swagger away from her down the main road of Whiterun Hold. “One of these days I’m going to spank that little brat,” she muttered crossly. Adrianne chuckled as she counted out the money for the former bandit weapons she had bought. They were of inferior quality, most of them, but Ysmir knew the smith could just melt them down and make pots of the ones beyond saving. Adrianne was versatile like that.

                “Amren’s taken notice of her behavior—he’s talked about perhaps sending her to a school for the children of Imperial soldiers intent on following their parents into service. Saffir won’t hear of it, though,” Adrianne told her, gazing after the child. “It is strange though; those two used to get along quite well. Braith and the Battle-Born boy, I mean.”

                Ysmir rolled her eyes. “Blaise used to get along quite well with everyone too; then suddenly he woke up and hated girls with an antagonism to rival Ysgramor’s hatred of elves.”

                The Imperial chuckled. “He’s at that age, is he?”

                The Dragonborn let out a huff of impatience. “Alesan’s the same age, but he doesn’t seem to have a problem with the girls.”

                Adrianne surprised her with a hearty laugh. Noticing her customer’s questioning look, she explained, “When my father became steward and we moved into the city Idolaf would chase me around and pull my hair. Ulfberth was the one that confronted him about it one day, and that started the friendship that led to our marriage. It was years before I knew Idolaf only tormented me because he didn’t know how else to get my attention.”

                Ysmir stared at her for a second before joining her laughter. “You think Braith picks on Lars because she likes him? You heard her; she’ll pick a fight with anybody.”

                “So why keep antagonizing someone who will never take her up on it?” the smith asked pointedly.

                “I ask myself the same question every time she picks one with me,” Ysmir sighed, taking the pouch Adrianne handed her and turning away with a wave.

                Just after she had sealed the deal with the blacksmith, Aela came down the road with a conflicted expression on her lovely face. “Let me guess,” Ysmir drawled, “Something came up and they need you to stay.”

                The Huntress nodded, looking as though half her mind were elsewhere, “This is not a mission for an inexperienced member, and it calls for an archer. I am the best, perhaps the only, choice for this.”

                The mage sighed. “Then you must stay. I can buy a new horse at the stables; Jughead’s getting lonely since the cow got stolen by a giant.”

                “I thought Blaise gave her to the giant to go away,” the Companion said, surprised.

                “I…that would explain a lot,” Ysmir said, thinking back on how smug the boy had gotten for a few days after that. Well, before his attitude had gotten on her nerves and she made him go clean the stall the cow had used until it smelled more strongly of soap than anything else.

                Aela laughed at the look on her face and offered to put her up for the night in Jorrvaskr, but Ysmir declined, wanting to get home as soon as possible. She hadn’t been away for more than a month in so long, and she was a little shocked at how much it hurt to be away from them. Perhaps she should just pay to have someone kidnap Esbern rather than go see him herself…oh, what was she thinking?

                The horse she ended up buying was a beautiful, glossy black creature called Queen Alfsigr, but Ysmir decided to call her Allie, because it would be easier for the children to pronounce. Allie was feeling frisky and glad to be out of the stables, for she trotted eagerly along the road with neck arched and tail flagged. She had a smooth, easy gait and Ysmir found herself greatly enjoying the ride, looking about the Whiterun Plains with new eyes. They really were beautiful, and it had been a long while since she had simply paid them any mind.

                The grass was sear and golden from the summer sun, undulating in waves that went on for miles. Bursts of late-blooming flowers dotted it with color, adorning the dull grey of the massive boulders that littered the plains, like tiny mountains trying to grow. A small herd of deer pranced across the open space, probably heading for water based on their silent, relaxed state. A fox carried a dead rabbit into one of the stands of tumbled stone, seeming to vanish right into the rock as he sought his cunningly concealed den.

                In the distance, a pair of giants walked their mammoth herd to a pool in one of the streams, and she reined in Allie to watch and avoid looking hostile. One of the giants noticed her anyway, and stared at her suspiciously for some time before moving on. Ysmir wondered how Blaise had managed to communicate with one, if his tale was true. They moved on quickly, going back the way they had come and allowing her to get around them in a wide arc. Allie was fast and she made much better time than she thought she would, reaching the wooded area at the base of the mountains by late afternoon. Finally, though, the night grew too dark and she made camp, Allie browsing the grass contentedly beside her. She placed a ring of fire runes around the camp, far enough away that the horse wouldn’t accidently set one off, and hoped that if a rabbit had the bad sense to cross one again, it at least did it at a decent hour where she could simply finish grilling it for breakfast.

                Around three in the morning she woke as Allie snorted uneasily.

                Coming toward them down the road was a ghostly figure riding a horse. Ysmir had seen him before; a headless rider that galloped the roads of Skyrim by night. Watching him, she reflected on the many times she had tried to follow but gotten left behind. Of course, this was all years ago, and she hadn’t had a horse then…but she hadn’t had children she was eager to return to, either. So she watched the figure approach, intending to watch him gallop on past, when something peculiar happened.

                The rider slowed, the ghostly horse pawing the ground nervously. Something dark appeared above them, and a dark shape uncurled from the larger mass to reach out.

                The spirit spurred his horse into action, and they shot past her camping spot with a speed she had never seen. The blot of darkness vanished as if it had never been. It was over in seconds, but left her feeling strange and shaken.

                Ysmir crawled out of her bedroll and poked the fire a bit before going over to Allie. The poor steed rolled her eyes, whites showing all the way around. Apparently the incident spooked her as much as it did her new mistress, although animals didn’t seem to like ghosts in general. “It’s alright,” she said, gently stroking the soft muzzle. _“Kaan,”_ she muttered, the first word all she needed to sooth the gentle beast. “It’s alright.”

                Gazing out into the night after the apparition, she wondered just what that blotch could mean.

.

* * *

 

.

                Runa saw her first. Her eldest child was up in the top of the new Alchemy tower with Sofie, staring off into space rather than doing the mending in her lap, wishing she was in the yard or the basement with one of the practice dummies. She and Sofie were altering some of Ysmir’s old clothing to suit her, as her old clothing was getting too short at the ankles and too tight across the chest. Blaise had walked in on her bathing the day before and teased her about becoming a werewolf, because he saw hair that wasn’t coming from her scalp. She had clubbed him a scrub brush and screamed for Lydia, who had dragged the boy away by the ear and returned to have a long talk with Runa about what it meant to become a woman. So far, Runa didn’t like the sound of it, and was heartily wishing she had been born a boy.

                Movement caught her attention, and she narrowed her eyes. Someone on a horse…as the figure came closer, her lips curled upward into a smile as the red hair caught the light. She whacked Sofie on the arm, and at the girl’s indignant noise, pointed.

                Sofie leapt to her feet, sewing forgotten, and raced down the ladder. Runa was hot on her heels, gleeful that they had caught sight of Ysmir first. She caught the girl’s arm when Sofie would have turned to start running right out the door, and grabbed Jughead’s hackamore, vaulting onto his bare back. He looked at her curiously as she held down a hand for Sofie, pulling her younger sister up behind her and sending Jughead racing down the hill.

                To her satisfaction, they reached Ysmir before the boys even noticed she was back.

                “Well, look at you two,” their mother said with a smile. “Taming wild horses. What’s next? Am I going to wake up tomorrow to find a note saying you went to Whiterun to join the Companions?”

                Runa grinned, drawing Jughead up alongside the beautiful beast her mother was riding. Her mother—how strange to think that Ysmir was only barely twice her age. “You know they won’t take me for another two years,” she said.

                “That reminds me,” Ysmir said, reaching into her bags, “Happy birthday. I’m sorry I missed it,” she added.

                Runa exclaimed happily as she took the package, quickly undoing the strings. The wrappings fell onto her lap, and she gasped. “This…this is…”

                “Skyforge steel,” Ysmir confirmed, turning it so that the girl could see the special designs Eorlund Gray-Mane had crafted into the pommel and quillons of the dagger. The blacksmith had started designing Runa weapons three years ago when Aela first brought Runa to Jorrvaskr, and the girl had declared that she was going to join the Companions. Her entrance to the order was only a matter of time; one had to be a minimum of fifteen years of age to be a Companion. So far, the only members in living memory to actually join at that age were Vilkas and Farkas.

                “Mother…” she said, looking up with tears in her eyes. Ysmir smiled. Somehow, without Runa even noticing when she did it, Sofie had clambered from one horse to the other, and sat perched up behind Ysmir, holding to her tightly.

                “I hope you got Aventus something that nice,” Sofie piped up, “or he’s going to be jealous.”

                “Ugh, two children becoming thirteen in one year! In the same month! What did I do to deserve this?” Ysmir asked the sky facetiously. The girls giggled.

                “Mother!” Blaise shouted, throwing down his fishing pole and racing up the road. Alesan followed more slowly, and Ysmir frowned, noting his leg was bandaged.

                “Alesan got bit by a slaughterfish,” Sofie murmured after glancing up at her mother’s face.

                “How did that happen?” Ysmir wondered aloud, halting Allie and helping Sofie slip to the ground so she could dismount.

                “Darva snuck up behind them and scared them,” the girl replied. “It was the same day she stole a horse.”

                “She what?” Ysmir demanded, voice going a bit shrill. Blaise hit her side in a running hug, and she had to fight to stay balanced. Then Aventus appeared with Lucia, both of them covered in dirt from working in the gardens, and the twins and Lydia appeared, then Inigo and Ma’Rakha, and she couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

.

* * *

 

.

                The children were all passed out in their beds (finally), and the adults were sitting around the fire, filling Ysmir in on what had happened while they were gone.

                “The kitten caught a skeever, yes. It was very tasty,” Inigo said proudly.

                Farkas snorted, “Only a cat would think a skeever was tasty,” he declared scornfully.

                Inigo didn’t bat an eyelash, “Only a house dog would turn up his nose at one.”

                “Shush,” Lydia told them sternly, with the same inflection and expression she used on Precious, and Inigo and Farkas obeyed in much the same way, with identical cringes. Ysmir smothered a chuckle, but it turned into another yawn. She didn’t think she could stay up much longer.

                “I’ve covered half my bases,” Ysmir told them. “I couldn’t find any answers on Solstheim, although I have a…colleague who will keep searching for me, and there was nothing definitive in The Arcanaeum. That leaves Paarthurnax and Esbern.”

                “I’m surprised you didn’t go to Paarthurnax first,” Vil remarked, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. His eyes had narrowed when she mention a colleague in Solstheim, which stirred vague feelings of alarm in her she was too tired to indulge in.

                “I have to be very careful with Paarthurnax,” she replied, yawning in the middle of the dragon’s name. “I know the Blades still watch me, occasionally. I see the reflection of their looking glass from the mountains.”

                “How do you know it’s them?” Farkas asked.

                “They’re not the only ones with spyglasses,” she replied with a grin. “So what’s this I hear about Honey-bee stealing a horse?”

                Lydia grimaced. “She had run away from the house after an argument with Blaise. It was just after Alesan had gotten bitten, so we were all distracted. She found a hunter’s horse alone on the road and assumed it was a stray, and rode it back up to the house. This was, by the way, after we had been looking for her for the better part of an hour. Farkas met her halfway on the road, after tracking her scent.”

                Ysmir sighed, “Sounds like my daughter,” she said, then yawned hugely. “Excuse me.”

                “That’s enough talk for one night,” Vilkas declared, scooping her out of the chair without a by-your-leave. “You’ve been ready to drop since you arrived,” he said, carrying her up the stairs.

                “Just because I’m tired doesn’t mean I can’t walk,” she protested, uneasy with the position. “Put me down!”

                “Hush, you,” he replied, setting her on the bed and starting to help her with her boots.

                She looked at him with astonishment for a moment. “Vil, I think you might have mistaken me for Darva—I’m Ysmir, the woman who fights dragons and can tie her own bootlaces. Or untie them, as the case may be.”

                He silenced her with kiss a bit more possessive than his normal, casual touches, taking her entirely by surprise. “Now,” he said, “you are going to go to sleep, not wake until long after the sun has risen, then take a long, hot bath, and eat everything your daughters urge on you. Understand?”

                She grinned, “Sometimes the girls urge me to try Lydia’s cooking. Does that count?”

                “Minx,” he growled, pulling off her other boot before knocking her backward on the bed, leaving kisses and little sharp nips all over her neck and collarbone.

                Ysmir gasped, “What happened to going to sleep?” she asked, suddenly breathless.

                “I did say you were going to sleep in, remember?” he replied, and Ysmir found she wasn’t nearly as tired as she thought she was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: A five-year-old kidnaps a minstrel off the road.


	9. A Good Song

     Darva was looking out over the lake, in the very top of one of the towers. Ysmir watched her for a few moments as the wind played with their hair and tugged at the little girl’s skirts. “Honey-bee,” she said after a while, “you’re never going to get that dress done by watching the water.”

     “Hm?” the little girl asked, turning back. After seeing him again, Ysmir was able to spot more of Miraak’s features in the girl’s face. She had his brow, but softened. His unfairly long eyelashes. His chin, which she firmed in the same way when she was preparing to be stubborn.

     “You’re the one who wanted mage robes for your doll,” Sofie reminded her, pulling another stitch tight with a bit of a huff. She had been trying to show her little sister something for several minutes, but the girl hadn’t been attending.

     “Right,” Darva replied, picking up where she had left off, placing a few ragged stitches before being distracted by the water again. Sofie sighed and returned to her own sewing—or rather, Runa’s sewing. Sofie was the best at stitching of all of them, Ysmir included, so she tended to end up with most of the sewing. “Momma,” Darva finally said after a long while spent gazing over the lake, “May I go?”

     Ysmir sighed and reached out, soothing the blond curls back from her child’s face, “Sure, Honey-bee. Don’t go far, though, alright? Stay in sight of the house.”

     “I promise I won’t go far,” the girl replied, lifting up the latch and sliding down the ladder the way the boys did; putting her feet to either side and using her hands to slow herself. She didn’t like the way Momma was looking at her, as if she was different than before. Something had changed, and Darva didn’t know if it was Ysmir, or herself. What if Blaise was right, and she was a bad girl, and Ysmir had realized it?

     She walked down to the lake, turning left to travel along the shore until she turned a bend and couldn’t be seen anymore. After all, she had only promised not to go far—if she stayed within sight of the house, chances were someone would come to see what she was doing, and she just wanted to think a minute. Holding her doll tightly, tossing aside the half-finished mage robes, she sank onto a rock and dipped her feet in the water, watching the ripples around them for several minutes. Minnows gathered around her toes, scattering when she wiggled them. A frog, startled by the sudden movement, darted into the water and disappeared under the layers of sunken leaves.

     Darva leaned back, letting her head hang loose on her neck as she gazed up at the clouds. They were wispy today, like layers of gauze wrapped around the world. None of them particularly resembled anything else, even to her active imagination. Wind whispered through the branches of the trees, tugging once again at her hair, though not as much as when she was in the tower. She supposed she should apologize to Sofie for wasting her time—she just didn’t have much of a head for something like sewing this afternoon. Tracing the worn features of her stitched baby, she began to sing idly, pitching her voice in tune with the soft breeze around her.

 _“Butterfly, butterfly: damage or fortify. Flutters down, sapphire snow; enchanter’s helper, warrior’s woe. Torchbug, torchbug: little light. Bad against mages, good in a fight_ —Hello?” she paused in her song to look up, eyes a little wide as she heard a noise.

     A man walked out of the brush, as if he had come from the road, and smiled widely when he saw her. He had suntanned skin and white hair, and carried a lute across his back, and a flute tucked through his belt. “Well met, little singer!” he called happily. “I heard your song from the road and couldn’t help but see whose sweet voice that was!”

     Darva blushed. “I didn’t know anyone could hear me,” she admitted.

     “I’m glad I did,” he replied, stopping some distance away from her and bowing at the waist. “Talsgar; itinerate minstrel and wandering wastrel, at your service.”

     The little girl had risen to her feet as he spoke, brushing off her skirt. Now, she blinked her big eyes in confusion. “What’s a wastrel?” For that matter, she didn’t know what itinerant meant, but she hadn’t caught the word well enough to ask.

     “It means I cannot keep money in my pocket, little one,” he replied with a laugh.

     “Oh. Is there a hole in it? My sister Sofie could probably fix that for you, if you ask her nicely,” she advised.

     Talsgar laughed again, “No, charming young thing; I cannot help but spend my money. To be fair, though,” he placed one long finger along the side of his nose, “much of it is on the expense of my travels, but I never was able to pass up good cooking, especially if it’s expensive!”

     “Are you a bard?” Darva asked, tilting her head to the side. The sun struck up red tints from her hair, and Talsgar thought for a moment that she looked familiar.

     “Yes, little one, I am,” he said proudly. “I wander the wilds, in search of song. And today I found one!” he teased.

     “Oh, good. We need a bard,” Darva said, pleased at this. When they went walking in the woods and found a wild berry bush or a group of truffles Lydia called it a “windfall.” She supposed finding a bard wandering around just after the last one quit was a windfall as well, and took his hand and started leading him to the house. Talsgar protested a bit, but didn’t pull his hand away even though he had to walk half-bent over, afraid of hurting the chubby little fingers wrapped around his.

     Vilkas was chopping wood near where Ysmir used to keep all the large timbers, his shirt removed after it had gotten sodden with sweat under the midday sun. He looked up when he heard an unfamiliar voice, then Darva’s cheerful chatter. She smiled sweetly when she saw him, leading a stranger who paled under his tan when he saw the imposing man with the big axe frown. “Papa Vil, look! I found a bard!”

     “A bard?” Vil repeated, skeptical. He raised his gaze to Talsgar, who began to sweat.

     “Talsgar?” Ysmir called down, having seen them emerge from the woods. The bard looked up to see his sometimes fellow traveler standing at the railing, looking down with a grin, and finally realized who the little girl reminded him of.

     “Ho, Ysmir!” he called, quite jovial, “This little one tells me you are in need of a bard, and seems to like me for the job.”

     “Hah!” she replied, swinging her legs over the railing and running swiftly along the edge of the roof to the corner, where she performed some kind of acrobatic feat he wasn’t able to catch that brought her safely to the ground. One of the two boys by the woodpile watched this closely and she pointed at him, “Don’t even think about it,” she ordered, making him pout. She was wearing a green tunic that came to her knees and charcoal trousers, and Talsgar thought she looked a lot more comfortable than when she was in that chainmail getup she normally sported. Tossing red hair out of her face, she graced him with that same friendly grin that had caught him when they first met, though he wasn’t able to properly admire it with the large man glowering at him over her shoulder. “I thought you said you were never planning on staying in one place. So, what? My daughter kidnapped you off the road?”

     “As always, your assessment of the situation seems to be correct, with the tiny variation of we were just off the road,” he replied, rubbing the back of his neck and looking anywhere but the other man.

     “Can we keep him?” Darva asked, glancing from one to the other.

     Ysmir laughed. “Ah, Honey-bee. People are not like animals; you can’t just adopt them when they follow you home.”

     Darva glanced at the boys. “You did,” she pointed out, and Vilkas gave a burst of laughter. Ysmir glared at him and he coughed, still smiling.

     “That’s…different. Anyway, would you like to stay for a bit, Talsgar? No obligation as to the duration, of course,” she added with a grin.

     “I would be honored, friend,” he assured her, and Darva snatched his hand again and practically dragged him inside.

     Vilkas leaned over and asked, quietly, “How do you know him?”

     Ysmir gave him an incredulous look, “You’ve travelled the roads of Skyrim for how long and you’ve never met him? It felt like I was running into him all the time.”

     “I tend not to use roads,” he reminded her with a shrug.

     “Right. Well, after a few dozen times running into each other, or passing each other, or coming to the other’s aid when wolves rushed out, we got snowed into the Nightgate Inn for about three or four days. We talked, we drank, we shared stories…”

     “Is that all you shared?” he asked suspiciously.

     Ysmir scowled a bit, “Why the keen interest in my choice of bedmates lately? No, we did not,” she replied pointedly. Not for his lack of trying, though. Unfortunately for Talsgar, Ysmir only had the overwhelming urge for intimacy after battling dragons, although with some, like Odahviing or Paarthurnax, it was curbed by actually being able to speak with them.

     Farkas stuck his head around the side of the house, saw them, and approached. “Darva just dragged a strange man into the house and started showing him around. She said he was the new bard.”

     “He _a_ bard, but he’s not _our_ bard,” Ysmir said, breaking her staring contest with the other twin. She grinned at the friendlier one, “Actually, he’s an old friend of mine, and has a rather pleasant voice. It’ll be nice to hear him sing again.”

* * *

 

 _“And so the Tongues freed us from Alduin's rage. Gave the gift of the Voice, ushered in a new Age. If Alduin is eternal then eternity's done. For his story is over and the dragons are... gone,”_ Talsgar finished with a flourish of strings. The children applauded wildly, for the last bard had been…not so good as their mother’s old friend. He made quite a picture, standing just close enough to the fire for the light to gild the polished wood of his lute with gold, bringing answering streaks from his silver hair. If Ysmir knew anything about bards, that was deliberate placement, halfway between light and dark. It gave him an air of mystery he cultivated as carefully as she did her alchemy reagents. “Thank you! Thank you kindly,” he said, bowing courteously to his audience.

     “It’s a shame he can’t stay,” Lydia observed wistfully, her chin propped on her hand. “That was wonderful,” she told the bard as he came to get a drink.

     He flashed her a grin that made Ysmir hope he drank enough to pass right out tonight rather than try anything with her housecarl, especially as their beds were in the same room. She didn’t fancy having to heal the man after Lydia’s rather emphatic method of rejection when forced to press the point, and Talsgar could be quite pushy, though he wasn’t nearly as bad as the bard in Whiterun. “When did you get instruments?” she asked, trying to distract him.

     Talsgar laughed, “I only just managed to save enough to buy them! You know how I am with a good meal, my friend. I’ve had nothing but the plainest fair for months, but I finally managed enough.”

     Ysmir laughed with him, thinking of all the times she had wandered upon random drums, flutes, or lutes in bandits’ nests. If she had known he wanted one he would have been outfitted long since, and with no one out of any coin (except the bandits, who were hardly in a position to need it).

     Inigo broke in with a request for a comedic song from Cyrodiil about a Khajiit who fell for a blind priestess of Dibella and tried all sorts of methods of getting her attention, up to pretending to be a kitty when she found him peeking at her window! The Nords looked confused, but Ysmir whacked him with a grilled leek, “Wait until the children are asleep before you start in on the bawdy stuff!”

     “Speaking of which…” Lydia started, glancing over at the waterclock. The children all groaned, knowing what was coming. “Oh, hush. It’s already far past your bedtime,” was how the housecarl responded to their grousing. Ysmir rose and the two women ushered the children downstairs to the bathing room while Inigo finally got his bawdy song.

* * *

 

     “Sky Haven Temple?” Talsgar repeated, brow furrowing as he looked down at the location on the map, “Surely I’ve heard of it—who hasn’t heard of the new Order of Dragonslayers?—but why would you want me to go there?”

     The two old friends were sitting before the fireplace, surrounded by cozy darkness and the quiet sounds of her family sleeping. Precious had elected to lie on Talsgar’s feet—which Ysmir found astonishing, since the ice wolf had been with them for several years and had yet to do more than acknowledge her presence with a cold glare or faint growl. She would probably never know what possessed either the wolf or Lucia to bring the animal back to the house.

     Ysmir gazed meditatively at the flickering glow of the coals, the sullen red and deep, intermittent darkness of the charcoal reminded of the Dremora Lords she used to summon. It had been a long while since she’d needed one, with the twins spending so much time with her these last few years. She took another sip of brandy before she answered, “I cannot go there myself, but I need to get a message to someone who is there.”

     The bard looked a bit petulant. “I’m a bard, not a courier, Ysmir.”

     “A courier couldn’t get in. A bard might just be welcomed in,” she replied. “Look, I know it’s in the opposite direction than you were traveling, and is in an area surrounded by Foresworn, but I can’t trust just anyone with this,” she gave him a pleading look. “I wouldn’t even be talking to these people if I had a choice.”

     Talsgar groaned, looking at her with dismay, “Not the lost puppy face.”

     “Please?” she asked, looking—had she but known it—just like her daughter when the child wanted something. “It won’t be just a favor, either, Talsgar. I’ll pay you for your trouble. I’ll pay for bodyguards if you feel you need them, even.”

     Finally, he sighed in capitulation. “You’re going to be the death of me, Dragonborn.”

     She handed him another bottle of mead with a grin. “But won’t it make such a good song?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: Ysmir shows off her terrible storytelling skills and Vilkas does some investigating.


	10. Trouble in Paradise

     In the end, after hearing from Talsgar what conditions were currently like in the Reach, it was decided that Ysmir herself would go, along with the twins, to ensure the bard’s safe arrival at Sky Haven Temple. The Dragonborn was reluctant, but Talsgar pointed out that it might be easier to convince Esbern to talk to her if she were relatively close by.

     “I hate to be leaving them so soon,” she fretted, gazing back over Jughead’s rump at the house dwindling in the distance. A few tiny figures could just barely be made out watching from the nearer tower. One of them was Darva, the other was either Sofie or Lucia, judging from size.

     “They’ll be fine,” Farkas assured her with a grin. “Lydia and Inigo are with them.”

     “Not to mention Aela should return from her mission within the week,” Vilkas put in, gazing around alertly. “She always stops in around the little one’s birthdays.”

     “Ysmir,” Talsgar put in musingly after a few more moments of her watching the house disappear to distance and woods, “I was wondering…how did you end up with so many children? They cannot all be yours.”

     The twins snickered. “Ysmir has a habit of taking in strays,” Farkas told the bard. “It doesn’t matter what they are.”

     “Ah, I remember that,” the older man replied, scratching the stubble appearing on his chin. “The first time I met her she was being followed around by a wild dog.”

     “Meeko,” Ysmir supplied. “He wasn’t wild, his owner had just died. I left him with Haming and his grandfather. The boy needed a friend and I just couldn’t care for him at the time.”

     “Lucia was an orphan in Whiterun,” Vil picked up the tale as if Ysmir hadn’t spoken, eyes still scanning the hillsides. “Her aunt and uncle took over her dead mother’s farm and tossed her out to beg on the streets. Ysmir saw her once, paid for her to stay in the inn for a week, and returned to say she had a room all set up for her in her house.”

     Ysmir shrugged. “What did I need with a room that big, anyway?”

     “Then she solved a murder in Windhelm,” Farkas continued, “and while she was there she heard of Aventus living all alone in his dead parent’s house—”

     “—doing nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever—”

     “—and marched in there, threw him over her shoulder, and took him home!” Farkas crowed.

     “I did no such thing!” Ysmir snapped, then grinned. “I merely took some time to convince him things wouldn’t be so bad at the orphanage if he gave it another shot.” That she had made things better at the orphanage was beyond the point.

     “Of course,” Vil said blandly, eyes shining as he shot her an amused look, “the first time she visited him at the orphanage, she ended up taking him home. Runa met her at the door with her bags packed and said in no uncertain terms that she did not want to stay in the orphanage a moment longer, and that she’d hire herself out as Ysmir’s serving maid if she had to.”

     “Of course, this was seven years ago, so that was just adorable,” Farkas gushed in an imitation of one of the girls when they’ve seen something cute. Ysmir kicked at him and he ducked.

     Ysmir gave both of them a quelling glare. “You aren’t even telling it right,” she admonished them. “All right. First was Lucia, which you heard. Only a few months after that were the murders in Windhelm, where I heard the rumors about Aventus, and within three months he and Runa were living with me. Then I met Alesan in Dawnstar while on the way to Solitude, and basically just packed him up to come with me. We passed by a stable where Blaise was working as a stable-boy, and the two began playing. Once I learned about him, I couldn’t just leave him. A little less than a year later, we were attacked by cultists from the island of Solstheim, and I headed out to Raven Rock to start to investigate. Sofie was selling flowers by the entrance to the docks from Windhelm. Her father died in the war. I couldn’t get her out of my mind when I was in Raven Rock, and so when I returned I took her home with me.” That about summed it up, but Talsgar was looking at her with disappointed disbelief for her lack of storytelling skills.

     “And when she got home,” Farkas said with a laugh, “Lydia begged her no more! Even with Vil and I coming out to help, and Inigo assisting, it was too much to handle without Ysmir there.”

     “So I agreed not to bring home any more children—”

     “—only to find out she was pregnant!” Farkas finished, laughing.

     “But all the children really put effort into being good after Darva was born,” Ysmir said, ignoring the penetrating look Vilkas was giving her, as if he had just realized something. “They all grew up a little, when they got a baby sister.”

     “But of course now they’re all bringing home pets,” Farkas chuckled, and regaled Talsgar with all the strange things that had been in the house over the years, from Precious the cranky ice wolf to a mudcrab named Butter that had disappeared into the lake.

     “Ysmir,” Vil said quietly from her stirrup under his brother’s chatter, and she glanced down in surprise. His black-ringed eyes were gazing at her keenly, “Darva’s father…is he from Raven Rock?”

     “No,” she replied, looking forward. It wasn’t a lie, either. She doubted Raven Rock had been established when Miraak was walking about.

     The werewolf scowled, “But he’s from the island?” he persisted.

     She sighed, “He was…I met him while on the island, yes. I can’t say if that’s truly where he was from.” For one thing, the island hadn’t existed until Miraak opposed the dragon rule.

     “Why don’t you want to talk about this?” he asked.

     “Why do you? I messed up and wound up pregnant—not that I regret it. That’s all there is to it,” as far as he was concerned, anyway.

     “You don’t…” Vil broke off, heaving a sigh in exasperation that let her know she’d won, for the moment.

     Thankfully, by the end of the day they were at the borders of the Reach, and between Foresworn and frostbite spiders, they had their hands full. It took the better part of a week to reach their camp spot, chosen carefully near but not-too-near Sky Haven Temple. Talsgar set out just after dinner on Jughead so that he would reach the temple only a little after dark, as if he were lost and had seen the lights.

     Of course, as soon as he was gone, Vilkas descended.

     Farkas headed out to get firewood after a tense conversation Ysmir pretended not to notice as she rolled out sleeping rolls. When Talsgar was with them they slept in separate ones, but now she simply piled them into one big one—it was much warmer that way, and she wasn’t a cold-resistant Nord like the twins were. Since it looked like it might rain, she hooked the top of the tent cloth over a low pine branch, staking down the corners. She was inside fixing the back top corner when he snuck up behind her.

     He trapped her between his chest and the tree, hands roving with a purpose that took her a bit off-guard coming from Vilkas. She responded immediately, trying to turn, but he shoved her back against the tree roughly, growling under his breath. What little she could see proved his eyes were glowing. Ysmir gasped, a little excited despite the slight sense of outrage she felt. The werewolf didn’t bother fully undressing her, simply removing what needed to be moved before spinning her around and taking her against the tree, his hands and lips rougher and more possessive than she could ever remember them being before. She clung to him, legs wrapped tightly around his waist as she gasped, nails digging into his back.

     Abruptly he slowed, lifting his glowing eyes to meet hers. “Who is he?” he asked, thrusting once, hard, to the question.

     “What?” she managed, dazed.

     “Darva’s father. Who. Is. He?”

     She groaned, feeling as if he were torturing her. “Really, Vilkas? _Now?”_

     He stopped, holding her captured, unfulfilled and unable to move against the rough tree bark. “Who is it, Ysmir?” he demanded.

     “Why does it matter to you?” she challenged, beginning to get angry.

     “Because it matters to you,” he yelled, surprising her again. Vil usually had a better rein on his temper. “I can see it in your eyes.”

     “Let it go, Vil,” she pleaded, resting her head against the tree and gazing up into the branches. It had begun to rain, and drops had been falling on her for some time. She hadn’t noticed until this point.

     Vil took a step back, drawing out of her and letting her down, still gazing at her with that angry granite mask. Curtly, he turned and walked out of the tent and into the woods. There was a moment of silence, then a heart-stopping howl rent the air, nearly drowned out by a peal of thunder. She hoped the Blades couldn’t hear that, or they would come looking.

     Ysmir sank down on the sleeping rolls, aroused, bereft, and no little bit angry. She didn’t want to think about Miraak. There was no place in her life, in her children’s life, for the new Daedra, so why did it matter? And…she didn’t want them to know. She didn’t want to talk about it, to admit to it, to admit that…

     She sighed with frustration, falling back on the furs and concentrating on being annoyed at her lover.

     “I thought he might have left you like this,” Farkas commented, joining her. She glanced at him, letting him see her irritation, and he smiled, hand stroking her thigh very gently. Ysmir was so hyped up she mewed involuntarily. “Don’t worry,” he said, pulling her gently to him—despite everything, Farkas was always gentle—“I won’t leave you like that…”

  

* * *

 

 

     Vilkas returned sometime in the night, for Ysmir woke to find him in his usual spot, tucked in beside her, opposite his brother. The pair of them were both cover hogs, which resulted, ironically enough, in perfect coverage as they each tugged on opposite sides of a blanket. His chest was against her back, leg between hers, while Farkas had a leg thrown over both of them, and an arm around her shoulder. Ysmir snuggled deeper under the covers and went back to sleep.

     He was gone at breakfast.

     “He has a lot to think on right now,” Farkas told her when she expressed her irritation, shoveling horker stew left over from the night before in his mouth. “And he doesn’t like it when people keep secrets.”

     “Well, sometimes ‘people’ just don’t want to talk about some things,” Ysmir groused, running a hand through her hair. One of the girls had apparently “borrowed” her brush from her travel pack, so she had no other way of combing it, which added to her irritation. She wondered briefly if she should start wearing it short again.

     “He hasn’t told you yet, has he?” the Companion asked abruptly, watching her for a long moment.

     She glanced at him, taken aback, “Told me what?”

     “Before that last mission with all the bandits, Kodlak had a meeting with him. Seems the old man is thinking of setting Vil up to be the next Harbinger.”

     Ysmir stared at him, coming to sit slowly beside him. “But that’s wonderful. I know it’s something he wants, so why is he acting so, so…”

     “He won’t be around as much, Ysmir,” Farkas pointed out with a shrug. “He loves those children, and you in his own way, and even Lydia and Inigo and the kitten. He’ll have to spend most of his time in Jorrvaskr, and leave you all behind.”

     Ysmir softened, glancing off in the direction Vil had gone the night before. “What does this have to do with Darva’s father?”

     “Don’t you see? If you decide that you truly do care for this man—one you’ve had a child with, and marriage has been based on less in Skyrim—he won’t have any claim on them whatsoever. If this man doesn’t like Vil, or want him around, there is nothing he can do about it. What I really think, Ysmir, is that Vil is scared of losing you and the children. He’d probably put on an Amulet of Mara for you himself if he thought it would really help rather than sending you running in the other direction.”

     Ysmir felt her mouth drop open and closed it with a snap. “I would never deny Vil—or you—access to the children. They love you. Even if I—for some unfathomable reason—decided to marry, it wouldn’t be to someone who couldn’t handle the fact that my children already have two werewolf fathers.”

     “And a dragon grandfather, and another dragon uncle,” Farkas continued with a smile, but Ysmir could tell she had put him at ease. He rose, carrying his bowl and spoon toward the little rivulet of water, too small to be called a stream, that they had camped beside.

     “Farkas…” he paused, glancing back at her with a neutral expression, “I…” she hesitated, then took a deep breath. “I promise, I will eventually tell you two who Darva’s father is, but for right now? Let’s just enjoy what we have.”

     “Sounds like a plan,” the Companion replied with a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: Esbern Disapproves.


	11. Blade’s Scholar

     Ysmir heard them long before she saw them. Esbern, while technically a Blade, was still an old man, and so his footsteps were slow and careful coming up the steep hill that they had chosen for their campsite. It was partially graveled, so anyone attacking from that side had to fight their way up a slippery slope, then work far harder than the defenders to keep their footing as they fought. The sheer cliff face behind them ensured that even the most sure-footed mountain climber wouldn’t dare try to sneak up on them that way, and the sides narrowed to paths a goat couldn’t take long before they were in a position to be reached.

     Putting down the stack of wood she had been carrying, Ysmir stretched, rolling her head to loosen tense muscles and mentally bracing herself for the argument that was surely to come. She had already donned her armor, a simple set of chainmail that went over her mage robes, doubly enchanted to preserve the health and protection of the wearer, so she simply moved to the edge and stood waiting for them to top the rise. Talsgar blinked in surprise to see her, noting how tense and weary she was of the friendly elder he had brought back with him.

     “Dragonborn! I had not thought the mysterious person this fellow wanted me to talk to would be you,” the scholar said, halting the moment he saw her. “I have nothing to say to you. You have made your choice,” with that, he turned and began walking down the hill.

     “This isn’t about me, Esbern,” Ysmir called. “This is about what you said in High Hrothgar, before we parted ways.”

     Esbern halted, then slowly turned, uncertainty in his gaze. His vows as a Blade, he had told her, prevented him from giving her comfort or aid while Paarthurnax lived, but she thought she knew how to get around that. If she wasn’t the real Last Dragonborn, then it was not just her problem, or Darva’s, it was everyone’s.

     “What did I say, Dragonborn?” he asked, obviously undecided.

     Ysmir glanced at Talsgar and jerked her head toward the campsite. The bard took the hint and hurried off. The woman watched him go for a few seconds, then looked back to the Blade scholar. “When I told you that I was unable to absorb Alduin’s soul, you theorized that perhaps he was still fated to return one day, to fulfil his destiny as World-Eater.”

     “You have completed the prophesy, Dragonborn. There is nothing more for you to do except that which you will not; to destroy the rest of the dragons and send them from Nirn forever,” Esbern said sternly, turning to walk further down the hill.

     “I may have met another Dragonborn.”

     Esbern froze as surely as if she had encased him in ice, then took a deep breath and walked back up the hill, staring her in the eyes. “Trying to trick me is beneath you, Ysmir. I know of the Dragon Priest you faced on Solstheim, just as I know you failed to do what was right with him, as well. For some reason you, who could be the instrument of justice long deserved, have decided to let these fiends continue to exist. Paarthurnax and the Dragonborn Miraak were horrible, vicious creatures who killed many before they vanished into hiding. I cannot understand why you let them live, and I certainly cannot condone it.”

     Ysmir crossed her arms, “Paarthurnax taught men the Voice so that they had a chance against dragons. He betrayed his own people in favor of ours. He helped overthrow Alduin and the Dragon Rule the first time, and now the second. Even the gods don’t exact punishment after penitence, so why should I?”

     Esbern sighed, “I should have known better than to try to shame you into doing your duty,” he said tiredly.

     “As for Miraak, there’s no point in even trying to kill him anymore—”

     “Oh, is there not?” Esbern snorted. “More followers flock to him every year, Dragonborn. His temple is nearly completed, and he’s been seen walking not only its halls, but elsewhere on the island of Solstheim. He grows in power and you do nothing to stop him!”

     Ysmir’s breath caught. He was able to appear on Tamriel again? When had that happened? She covered her fluster with a dry tone, “I’m Dragonborn, Esbern, not a champion against Daedric Princes.”

     “It was my understanding that Hermaeus Mora had abandoned him,” Esbern replied, not letting her budge.

     “Hermaeus Mora is him,” she revealed, and had the satisfaction of seeing him shocked. “Miraak defeated him and took over Apocrypha.”

     “That’s impossible,” the old man breathed, dropping his arms. If this were a physical, rather than verbal sparring match, Ysmir would have struck, for in that moment all his defenses were down.

     Well, she supposed she should strike anyway. “It is both possible and not my problem at the moment. He wasn’t the Dragonborn I was referring to. I may have met a completely new Dragonborn.”

     “You’ve seen them consume a dragon soul?” Esbern asked after a moment, a bit of excitement coming to his eyes, quickly shuttered.

     Ysmir was a bit alarmed—she had been thinking of Darva so much that the obvious hadn’t occurred to her; that the Blades would undoubtedly begin searching for this new Dragonborn to join the Blades and lead their cause. They couldn’t know that it was but a little girl, who thought of dragons as nothing more than a different type of people. “Well, no, but they picked up Shouts the same way I can. I was given the impression by the Greybeards that only those with dragon blood can do this.”

     “By the gods,” he muttered, looking down at his boots as if the answers lay there, strewn at his feet among the gravel and leaf litter.

     “If I was truly not the Last Dragonborn, Esbern, I need to know. Has everything I’ve done been for nothing? And if so, am I to help the real Last Dragonborn defeat Alduin?” she looked away, rubbing her forehead as she realized he would not be able to help her with this unless he put aside his vows, whether or not the rest of the world was in danger. He might just decide his duty was to abandon her and train this other Dragonborn. It would probably go a long way towards bandaging their wounded prides, if she turned out to be a false Last Dragonborn and this new one led them on the way to victory.

     Evidently, this thought had crossed his mind, as well. “I would be remiss in my duty if I didn’t ask—no, order you to stay away from this new Dragonborn, Ysmir,” he said sternly.  “If in fact Dragonborn they are. The Greybeards have not called a new Dovahkiin to High Hrothgar, after all. It could just be this person is one of the Tongues of old. Even though Dragonborn are Tongues, it doesn’t follow that every Tongue is Dragonborn.” He sighed, “This must not get around, either, as much as some might like to discredit you, who no longer hunt dragons. If people thought the World-Eater was to return, there would be panic.”

     “And they would probably knock down my door to either beg me to save them or tear me apart for failing. And before some of you begin to think that’s a good idea, remember that I have half a dozen children living there who would get caught in the crossfire.” Greatly daring, she reached out and caught his face in her hands, forcing him to look her in the eyes. “Please, Esbern. I don’t care if everyone thinks me false, but those children have already lost everything once. Don’t allow that to happen to them again.”

     After a moment, he stepped back from her hands, which fell listlessly to her sides. “I will research this, Dragonborn. For now, we know only that this is speculation. Perhaps some are better at learning Shouts than others, and this person is not truly Dragonborn, simply talented in the Greybeard’s Way of the Voice. I will not voice this to any other until I know which is the case. I do this not to help you, but to preserve what peace there is in this war-torn country.”

     Ysmir nodded even as her heart dropped, stepping back and letting him go down the hill, where Talsgar offered to let him ride Jughead on the way back to Sky Haven Temple, but Esbern refused, walking off alone into the hills. The Dragonborn sighed, deeply regretting coming here, talking to one who could decide to make her life very difficult. Farkas had kept watch at a discreet distance up until this point, but now he padded up behind her, and she could hear the question that he refused to ask. “I’m fine,” she told the Companion, giving him a wan little smile over her shoulder. “Just…I wish these people didn’t hate me so much,” she revealed, a bit of a catch in her voice.

     “What did you do to them?” he asked, coming up beside her.

     “It’s what I didn’t do,” she told him, vaguely aware of Vilkas somewhere to her right, still hidden, listening, in the trees. “I didn’t destroy Paarthurnax, a dragon. I didn’t betray the Greybeards, who taught me. I didn’t join them. I didn’t lead them,” she glanced up at Farkas’s slightly stricken face—Farkas, who was the first to speak to Paarthurnax and watch him play Old Dovah with the fascinated children, and who knew Paarthurnax would sooner die than hurt Ysmir—and let her fear show on her face. “Now I might have given them a weapon against me, all because I didn’t think through just what my coming here would mean.” She sighed and scrubbed at her eyes, vaguely surprised to feel the beginning of tears welling there. The scholar’s stonewalled refusal had hurt more than she thought it would, and was much, much stronger than she had surmised. “I thought I could trust Esbern at least, but you saw his reactions. If Alduin returned right this moment, he would not aid me. He would fight against the Black Dragon with all his strength, but not at my side. I am all but dead to him, Farkas. A blight, a disappointment, and the Blades will wish to be rid of me if they can.”

     “Then we’ll have to ensure they never discover who the next Dragonborn is,” Vilkas finally put in, coming to stand beside her and taking her hand.

     “Vil…” she said, a question in her violet eyes as she studied his expression.

     “We’ll stand by you, Ysmir,” Farkas said for his twin, taking her other hand. “Both of us, no matter what happens.”

     Vilkas smiled and squeezed her hand. “No matter what,” he reaffirmed. “We’ll be here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: Miraak teaches Darva some useful things and lets the proverbial cat out of the bag.


	12. Different

     Darva was beginning to think the boys were having her on. True, she had asked to play hide-and-seek with them because she knew the perfect hiding place, but they had not found her in what felt like forever. She poked her head out of the hollow she had found in the roots of the fallen tree on the hill across the road from Pinewatch, Uncle Inigo’s home, but didn’t see them. Ma’Rakha and Aventus were playing marbles in the front yard there, so she scampered down to ask. Aventus looked at her like she was unbelievably dense. “Blaise and Alesan went fishing with Uncle Inigo ages ago!”

     She stamped her foot, “They were supposed to come find me! We were playing hide-and-seek!”

     Ma’Rakha grinned, pointed ears twitching toward her, “Look on the bright side,” he said, “You obviously won!”

     Darva thought about it and didn’t feel so badly, after that.

     “Do you want to do me a favor, Honey-bee?” Aventus asked, and she looked at him curiously. “We’re out of blue mountain flower, and Lydia likes having some around, because it’s just about the only thing she can make health potions with. I couldn’t find any around the house; do you think you could bring back any you find? I know you like to explore.”

     Ma’Rakha looked at him askance. “What if she gets in trouble?”

     “It’s alright,” he assured the Khajiit with a smile. “Honey-bee can take care of herself.” Darva smiled widely and took the basket—carrying it on her head since she was scarcely taller than it—rushing off back towards where she had come with a wave and an ego-boost. She knew right where to go, too.

     “How can she take care of herself?” Inigo’s adoptive son demanded of his “cousin.”

     Aventus looked surprised. “Didn’t you know? Darva can Shout. Don’t tell anyone, though. I only know because I overheard the Papas talking about it.”

     Ma’Rakha thought for a moment. “As long as she doesn’t Shout at me,” he said at last, returning to the game, “It’s bad enough when ordinary women shout, Papa says, without the Dragon Voice coming into it.”

     Meanwhile, Darva was headed to her favorite spot, one she normally didn’t get to go to because it was so very far from the house; a bit more than a quarter hour walk from Pinewatch, and a bit of a climb. She scrambled up hills that weren’t too steep until she heard the sound of water, and there was a pretty mountain stream with flowers all about it. She had found slaughterfish eggs here, once, so she didn’t swim in the pool, although it looked inviting, but she did stop to pick about half of the blue mountain flowers that grew there. Only half, because she knew that if she was lazy like the boys and picked all of them, more wouldn’t grow here. Once done, she headed upstream, to a small, door-less shack that looked as if it had been burnt at some point. Behind the house, a lovely waterfall arched down from a high promontory, falling to cascade over a ledge then into a basin of sweet, clear water.

     Darva settled herself with her back against the shack, watching the water. Something moved out of the corner of her eye, and she turned to find a skeever turning the corner. It had apparently set up shop in the house. _“Kaan,”_ she said, without waiting to see what it would do. Peace settled over the creature, and she rose, shooing it away until it scampered off into the underbrush. It would either find a new home, or she would have to do this every time she came up here, which she was not looking forward to. Perhaps Sofie could have brought it home and made a pet out of it, but she certainly had no inclination to. Besides, she was nowhere near as good with animals as Sofie was.

     “Not what I would have done.”

     The little girl squeaked—not unlike the skeever—and turned, then her face lit with a welcoming smile. “Bormah!” she said, rushing over to hug her friend. He hesitated, like he wasn’t entirely sure what to do, then knelt and held her for a long moment.

     Bormah looked her over carefully, smoothing her hair away from her face. “I heard you Shout,” he said at last. “I wanted to know you were alright.”

     She dimpled, “I’m fine. I’m sorry if I bothered you; I didn’t think anyone could hear me up here. That’s why I come up here,” she wrinkled her nose, “it gets so noisy in the house sometimes.”

     He smiled, the scales on one side of his face sliding subtly against each other. Darva longed to be able to ask him about that, but she knew it would be rude. She had already gotten scolded once for asking an Argonian visitor about why he had scales, being told only “some people do.”  “I myself used to go off into the hills when the burden of those around me became too much to bear. Solitude is necessary, sometimes, for one to remember themselves. I used to wonder if that was why your mother wandered so much” he added musingly, “So many people try to tell her who to be.”

     “Blaise is from Solitude,” she said, confused.

     He looked confused as well for a moment, then his face cleared and he chuckled. “Forgive me, Little Bee. I forget sometimes that children are not tiny adults. You must let me know when what I say confuses you.”

     “I will,” she promised, unabashed, and he chuckled again.

     “I brought you a gift,” he said, reaching behind him and bringing out a book.

     Darva took the book curiously, opening it up and leafing through the pages. “I only know a few words,” she said, brow creasing, “but they don’t look like this.”

     “That’s because this is a book of the Dragon Language,” he said, settling himself beside the house, as she had done. Darva slid down next to him, tucking her skirt around her legs. “I thought, since you can Shout, you might like to learn it.”

     “Really?” she asked, looking up at him with her face glowing with interest.

     “Would I say it if it were not so?” he countered, taking the book and opening it to the first page.

     Darva drank in the words before her like she never had with ordinary ones. It was still difficult, and she struggled and didn’t get very far, but Bormah was patient with her as he taught her the shapes of the words. Strangely enough, she felt as if she should know them already, and was mildly frustrated by it, as if she were trying to remember something that should be obvious. Bormah must have picked up on that, for after a while he offered to simply read a bit to her, first in the language of the book, then again in Tamrielic.

     The book was a story about a young dragon, but he was born in a weak form, a different form. He was so different that the other dragons didn’t realize that he was one of them, and thought him something else entirely. The people he looked like raised him, cared for him, but could never understand him, though they believed they did. Darva thought of the poor dragon boy as a Wood Elf being raised among the ancient, mysterious Dwemer; always wanting to go outside and be among the trees while those around him could not understand why he wasn’t happy, safe underground with tons of carved stone and metal between him and the sky.

     When she voiced this, Bormah gazed at her in surprise. “Very much so,” he said, and she noticed that he was looking quite transparent.

     “You have to go again, don’t you?” she asked, disappointed.

     “Yes,” he said simply, looking regretful.

     “I wish you could stay,” she sighed wistfully.

     “I do too,” was all Bormah said, and they both watched the waterfall for a long moment, book still spread over both their laps. “Do you want to know how to get rid of that skeever?” he finally asked.

     “I don’t want to hurt it,” she responded instantly, gazing up at him with wide eyes. She looked, for a moment, very much like her mother, in that fateful instant he had realized that he did not want to kill her.

     He shook his head, once, in impatience. “Scare it then. Do you want to scare it away for good?”

     “Please,” she answered, nodding in a decidedly business-like manner that brought a smile back to his face.

     Bormah stood and looked around, then walked over to a section of soft earth. _“Faas,”_ he breathed at it, and markings like in the book appeared on the ground. Darva got up and walked over, gazing bemusedly at the marks. Suddenly, they seemed to rush into her, the way the ones in the book had, but different, deeper. Looking up at him, she saw faint ribbons of light pass between them. At her wondering, questioning gaze, he explained, “I passed on to you my knowledge of the Word. It is how the Greybeards taught your mother, and how she inadvertently taught you what Shouts you know.” There was a bit of a pause. “You are very gifted, you know. Most need to see the Word etched in order to start the process of understanding its meaning. You seem to be able to do so merely by hearing it a few times.”

     Darva shook her head. “It was on the ground,” she explained, and when he glanced at her, she shrugged. “After Momma sent things flying with that Shout, there were always scratches on the ground. I would stare at them for a bit…but they would vanish, like yours is. I never got to ask her about them.”

     Another pause. “Ah. I see. That would explain much.”

     “Bormah,” she said hesitantly, gazing up at his dragon eye, “Why am I the only one who learned how to Shout? Why can I do it, and Momma do it, but Lydia or Blaise can’t?” She tilted her head to the side. “And how come you can do it too?”

     Bormah hesitated, then knelt before her, taking her shoulders in hands that were barely there in the late afternoon sunlight. She could see the westerning sun right through his head, the incandescent disk showing perfectly through his dragon eye, as if it had replaced it. “Because we’re special, Darva. Because we’re _dovahkiinne._ ” With that, he leaned forward and kissed her forehead, above her wide, wide eyes, and vanished.

     Darva sat down abruptly right where she was, hands clutching the emptiness where the book had been and staring blankly into the beginnings of sunset.

_Dovahkiin._

. 

* * *

 

. 

     He let his hands fall to his sides and sighed, looking about him. Pages fluttered in a breeze only they felt, whirling about him before abruptly settling to join the layers of parchment that covered the ground. Tomes floated restively through the still air, burying themselves in the stacks of the walls while a Seeker flitted passed, ignoring him in its hunt. Miraak stood, wondering if he had told the girl too much. He had answered her question, but…Reaching inside his robes he pulled out his mask and slid it over his face, replacing his troubled expression with the calm indifference of the bronzed metal.

     Apocrypha had never seemed so empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Ysmir makes an unwelcome discovery on the side of the road.


	13. The Assassin on the Road

     Ysmir looked down at the dead assassin at her feet and half-sighed, half-snorted in exasperation. “Do they even have any members left?” she asked rhetorically, carefully checking the armor for anything useful. She was grateful Talsgar had already parted ways with them, having decided to head on to Falkreath rather than Rorikstead. She wished him luck.

     The search turned up thirteen septims, an average-quality orcish dagger, and the usual note:

_“As instructed, you are to eliminate Ysmir by any means necessary. The Black Sacrament has been performed—somebody wants this poor fool dead._

_We've already received payment for the contract. Failure is not an option,”_ signed, “Astrid.” This one had a post-script, however, that almost made her smile: _“Try not to get yourself killed. This is getting embarrassing.”_

     Ysmir crumpled it up, then smoothed it out and put it in her belt pouch. She collected the things. She must have over twenty by now. “Sooner or later I might just have to deal with them,” she muttered.

     “I don’t know why you haven’t,” Vilkas informed her, nudging the dead Khajiit with a toe.

     “Sithis,” she replied dryly. “I’ve had trouble enough with Daedra to think he would take me slaughtering his most faithful followers personally, and decide to let me know it bothered him.” She grinned wryly as both twins blanched. “So, let us return home.” When they exchanged a glance, she sighed, “Now what?”

     “It’s been awhile since we checked in at Jorrvaskr,” Farkas said with a shrug. “Almost a month.”

     She sighed. “Ah, go. I’ll just take Jughead home.” The twins exchanged looks again and she snapped, “I’ve been on my own before, you know. It’s not like I couldn’t summon Odahviing, or even Durnehviir, if I got into something I didn’t think I could get myself out of!”

     Vilkas rolled his eyes, “Would you even know if you had gotten yourself in over your head?” he muttered, apparently forgetting she had elven hearing.

     “We would simply feel better if you had someone to watch your back,” Farkas interjected quickly, seeing the indignation rising in her expression. “Even we Companions seldom head out without a Shield Brother.”

     “Oh, Divines preserve me. Fine,” she huffed, tugging Jughead’s reins and heading down the road that would eventually lead to Whiterun. “I have a friend in Rorikstead.”

. 

* * *

. 

     “Ysmir!” Mralki greeted her warmly when she walked into his inn. “It’s been too long!”

     “Hello, Mralki,” she said, looking around. Mralki’s inn was pretty much like any other; the low lighting, stone floor, and tables lining the side of the room while a half-trained bard played flute for what few people were drinking this time of day. “Is Erik about?”

     “You’re lucky; he just got back! Got a job this summer escorting silver shipments through the Reach.” He walked over and handed her a bottle of ale—by long-standing custom, her first ale was on the house. “I was worried at first, but he was with several seasoned fighters, and by all accounts did well for himself. The Silverblood family even gave him a written recommendation!” The grin of the former soldier was full of pride for his son, still shadowed by concern. Ysmir smiled back, full of confidence. She had been instrumental in helping Erik put his life at risk, and she had always questioned it, but she would not burden the boy’s father with that knowledge.

     “I’m sure I’ll get a chance to read it,” she said, sliding onto a bench. “I take it he’ll be back before too long?”

     “He’s helping remove that stubborn old stump in the middle of Cowflop farm’s new field. I imagine they won’t work long after dark,” he said, eyeing the twins curiously.

     “Mralki, these are my friends, Vilkas and Farkas of the Companions in Whiterun. We need to be parting ways here in Rorikstead, and they seem to think I need someone watching my back,” the glance she gave them let Mralki know that she was a little miffed about that, but he smiled, shaking his head.

     “Can’t say I’m eager to see him leave again, but seeing as I know you can take care of yourself, and he always comes back from trips with you brimming with stories, I won’t give him the usual lecture, should you decide to take him with you.” Now he openly looked the twins up and down. “Companions, eh? Heard nothing but good about the Companions, and any friend of Ysmir is a friend of mine. First ale’s on the house, or mead if you prefer.”

     “Ale,” Farkas confirmed happily, slipping in next to Ysmir. Vilkas simply nodded and sat on her other side, waiting for Mralki to leave before speaking.

     “This boy…” he began, and Ysmir groaned.

     “Is a boy, Vil. I admit he might have had a bit of a fancy for me for a while, but…” she struggled to find a good way to explain and gave up. “If you’re wolves, he’s a puppy. A big, lovable, hound puppy that will one day be a big, valuable dog, but for now he’s still just an affable lump of innocence. I’d sooner sleep with my little brother, had I one.”

     Farkas smirked, “Poor man,” he muttered, but then Erik himself walked in the door, painfully glad to see her, and she never got to respond.

.

* * *

. 

     “Companions! They were Companions?” Erik seemed a bit star-struck, and Ysmir was a little afraid he was going to turn right around and chase after the twins.

     “Yes. They joined when they were very young,” she told him, whacking him on the arm. Erik was up behind her on Jughead, and she wondered if she really should have done that, as he seemed to enjoy having his arms about her waist just a little too much. “I hope you aren’t thinking about joining. You have talent, Erik, but the Companions are the best there is. You have a lot of practice to do if you want to join their ranks.”

     “Oh,” he said, crestfallen. Ysmir winced, not having wanted to hurt his feelings, but she knew he wasn’t ready for the Companions. For one thing, finding out they were werewolves would horrify him. For another…the Companions were called upon for many things, including those things no one else was able to handle. Before the Blades really started recruiting members, they were even called upon to defeat dragons. Ysmir didn’t want Erik in those situations. Really, she wished he would find a girl, buy a house, and settle down as a Hold Guard. Only, she had seen a lot of dead guards in her day…

     Life was complicated.

     Some hours passed, and they stopped for midday to rest Jughead and get a bite to eat. The road was still relatively clear from Ysmir and the twins having recently come this way, and they had only had to stop once for a migrating frostbite spider. It was nearing full night, and they were looking for a likely campsite, when they were forced to stop again.

     “Do you hear that?” Erik asked suddenly.

     Ysmir pulled Jughead to a halt. Wind whistled through the trees, howled distantly over the rocks, but nothing else permeated the twilight gloom.

     Then, faintly, she heard crying.

     Dismounting, she readied a firebolt and crept forward, between the trees a ways. Erik wordlessly went around, circling so that any threat would be caught in a pincer between them. Ysmir almost grinned; he was learning.

     A shallow cave was up ahead, and Ysmir frowned, glancing around outside it. A folded set of clothes was set beside a pool, as if someone had expected to return and need a bath right away. Taking out her dagger (of the Dragon Priest variety, for she enjoyed irony), she flipped open the black and red robes without touching them.

     A black handprint adorned the center of the chest.

     Ysmir let the cloth drop, interrupting the line of ants that had been creeping over the stump. Her brow furrowed, glancing at the water of the pond. Several small, white lumps could just barely be seen some distance in.

     The crying stopped.

     Ysmir looked up. Erik emerged from the brush screening the pool from the cave, carrying a crying, hiccupping child that tried to cling to him despite tied hands. “I can’t get the knots undone, and my dagger won’t fit under the ropes,” he explained, placing the girl down on the stump with the clothes. He frowned and brushed the ants away, then awkwardly patted the girl on the shoulder.

     “Ah,” Ysmir said, kneeling before the child. “Are you alright?” she asked. The girl had a sweet face and some of the silkiest brown hair Ysmir had ever seen, and her movements, even hampered by the ropes, were surprisingly graceful.

     “No!” she sobbed, and Erik looked down at her with so much sympathy Ysmir was afraid he might cry, too. “No I’m not alright! I’ll never be alright again! The Dark Brotherhood killed my momma and papa, and then they took me captive!”

     Erik looked shocked. “The Dark Brotherhood? Are they here now?” he asked, putting his hand on his sword and looking around.

     The little girl shook her head. “N-no. I’ve been alone for days. The Khajiit that captured me left to fulfil another contract, but didn’t come back. I think they were going to sell me into slavery!”

     Ysmir nodded, “Right,” she said, then rudely shoved the girl backward on the stump, dagger at her neck as astonishment flickered over the sprawled child’s face, “Erik, go wait by the horse.”

     “Ysmir!” he yelped, aghast. “She’s just a little girl!”

     “No she’s not,” Ysmir replied, not taking her eyes off the un-child.

     “What are you doing?” the little girl wailed, kicking weakly. “Let me up!”

     “Ysmir!” Erik protested, trying to pull her off.

     She sighed and eased back slowly, ready to encase the child in ice if she needed to. “Now, who are you, really?” she asked the girl; although she could guess, she wanted Erik to hear it.

     “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” the child wailed, struggling into a sitting position and scrubbing angry tears from her cheeks.

     “Don’t. Just don’t,” Ysmir replied, shaking her head. “I traveled with the princess of the Volkihar vampires for over a year. I know one when I see one.”

     There was a pause, then the innocence left the round, sweet face to be replaced with a look of wicked intelligence. “What gave me away?” the girl asked, voice smooth and cool.

     “Everything,” Ysmir replied. “I hope you didn’t let that Khajiit die just to lure me here.”

     The vampire tossed her head. “Of course not. She believed she could handle you. I thought otherwise, and followed. I told her you would kill her, but she was confident in her abilities.”

     “So you just let her go to her death. Some brotherhood,” Ysmir muttered, then sighed, looking at the girl while she pondered her options. “What’s your name?”

     The girl shrugged, “Babette.”

     “And you’ve been an assassin how long?”

     Babette smiled proudly, displaying glistening fangs. “Long enough.”

     Long enough not to have any family to want her back. Long enough to be a child in no more than body. The Dragonborn watched the pool for a few seconds, seeing tiny slaughterfish schooling around the edge. They got along fine with their siblings now, she knew, but when they got older and more crowded in the pool, they would devour each other. Things always grew more vicious with age. People were no different, whether their bodies grew with their minds or not. Darkness eclipsed the pool as she pressed her eyelids closed.

     “Well, I’m not in the habit of killing children, no matter how old they are,” Ysmir decided, opening her eyes and standing. “That doesn’t mean I have to untie you. Come on, Erik,” she turned, striding away from the little assassin and all she implied. It would have been a brilliant, probably perfect plan, to their way of thinking. Ysmir was known for taking in orphans now—the children from Honorhall Orphanage came to her house twice a year so the children could play in the lake and get out of Riften for a while. So sending an assassin that looked like a child? It had probably seemed foolproof.

     “Are…are we just going to leave her?” Erik asked, subdued.

     “What do you want me to do? Untie the vampiric assassin and have her follow us home?” she asked sarcastically.

     “Well, she’s a vampire, so shouldn’t we..?”

     The Dragonborn stopped and took a deep breath before turning back to her companion, “Can you kill her? Looking like that?” His silence was all the answer she needed, and she turned and mounted Jughead, putting on a Ring of Candlelight to combat the twilight gloom. “Come on. We’ll ride through the rest of the night. I don’t want to chance sleeping now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: An unexpected visit from a relative leaves Ysmir perilously low on cheese.


	14. “Uncle Pelagius”

     The first thing she noticed when she arrived home, both she and Erik walking, exhausted, on either side of an equally tired Jughead, was that no one seemed to be around. It was midmorning, but no one was adding to the woodpile, or fishing in the lake. No small figures took advantage of the light in the tower to sew or read. No one milked the cow or practiced against the pells. Ysmir halted, eyes scanning the area around for any sign of threat, then raced to the house, adrenaline giving her another burst of energy. She skidded to a halt by the door and carefully crouched down, waving for Erik to follow her lead. He did, looking alarmed and doubtful, for he really was not the sneaking type.

     Ysmir eased the door open and peeked in. Lydia leaned against the inner door to the dining area, arms across her chest, not ready to fight but certainly not relaxed. She rolled her eyes at something, stopping mid-way with a frown as she noticed the door cracked. Her expression eased when she saw it was Ysmir at the door and she joined them outside, her sculpted face still holding a sense of puzzled irritation. “I know you send me help, sometimes, Thane, but I would like a warning before you send another one like this.”

     “What?” Ysmir asked, completely unable to fathom what she meant.

     “Your uncle. Crazy mage?” she waved her arms in an exaggerated parody of doing magic, but at Ysmir’s continued dumbfoundment, Lydia continued with less certainty. “He knew a lot about you, even told some childhood stories. He arrived and declared he needed the staff back he had let you borrow. When I said you weren’t home, he pulled it out of the wall. I assumed it was another one of those little caches you seem to install without telling me.”

     The Dragonborn was beginning to get a sick sense of recognition. “Did he…do anything with the staff?”

     “Well, he turned a bunch of bandits into sturgeon, which was helpful but—” Lydia broke off as Ysmir rushed into the house.

     “…once she discovered what the mushroom could do, she had to take some with her and oh, hoh! Here’s yer mother.”

     Ysmir stared at the figure sitting on the table in front of her children, breathing hard and completely uncertain what to do. The children got up and swarmed her, as was normal when she returned home. Behind her, she could hear Erik and Lydia getting reacquainted as they brought up the rear.

     “Mother, Uncle Pelagius turned a bunch of bandits into fish!” Blaise enthused, eyes shining. “Then he turned their horse into a sabercat, and it ate all of them!”

     “Uncle _Pelagius,_ huh?” Ysmir asked, arching a brow at the visitor, who grinned charmingly.

     “I needed my Staff,” he said, brandishing the Wabbajack.  “And my hipbone, if you still have it. What use is a staff without a hipbone!” he crowed, waggling his eyebrows at Lydia.

     Ysmir groaned. “It’s in my house in Markarth,” she informed him. She had just returned; she fervently hoped the Mad God was not going to insist she go right back out and get it.

     “Ah, no matter. These darling, bright-eyed little buggers have been plying my temper with food. And I do love to eat! And I love eyes, especially bright ones!” He waved his arms as he talked, resulting in the Wabbajack knocking over a candlestick and whisking a plate off the table.

     “Careful, Uncle Pelagius!” Alesan cried as he ducked.

     Sheogorath turned to fix him with a sharp look, and Ysmir’s heart skipped a beat. But then he broke into a wide grin once again. “Cheeky! Telling me what to do! You just want to puff up his cheeks and fill them with acorns! Then rip them off and use them as a sack.”

     “Children, Mother has not seen She—I mean Uncle Pelagius in a long time and I’m sure you have chores to do,” Ysmir said, giving them all a stern look.

     “But Uncle Pelagius was telling us a story,” Blaise whined.

     “Now!” she snapped, and the children exchanged startled glances and reluctantly walked off.

     Runa handed Sheogorath a plate of goat cheese wedges and apple slices with a rueful grin. “Perhaps some other time,” she told him.

     “Oh, you’re thirteen; I’ll be seeing ye off and on for the next four years,” he told her with a grin. “Puberty is maddening.”

     Runa gave him a bemused look, then smiled and shook her head, heading off. Ysmir relaxed slightly, and finally was able to greet the Mad God with a cautious grin. “Well, it has been a long time, Sheogorath,” she said, making Lydia blanch and Erik fall into a chair with a thud.

     He hopped off the table, carrying the platter and munching on some cheese, “Time is an artificial construct, Granddaughter. It can be tricky to understand. Sometimes, when ye think you are out of time, you find you have eternity. And sometimes, when ye think you have eternity, you find someone stole your sweetroll.”

     The Dragonborn shook her head, but she couldn’t help but smile at him. “You haven’t changed.”

     “But I have. Or haven’t I? I’m a Daedra; we like change. And hopscotch!”

     “Dare I ask what you were telling my children?” she asked, pouring him a glass of wine and offering it. He poured it on his head where it didn’t actually seem to get him wet, or indeed, touch him at all, and grinned, then scowled.

     “A lively tale of one little girl that fell down a rabbit hole. Loved mushrooms. And tea parties. Oh, the tea parties I had with that woman! And the hats! Needed the hats, mind. It’s hard to have a tea party when Falmer are filling you with arrows.”

     Erik shuddered, “I hate Falmer!” he apparently couldn’t stop himself from saying.

     “They hate you too,” Sheogorath assured him kindly, then continued. “Fell down a rabbit hole and got stuck in a Dwarven store room. The Dwarves laughed at her, but when they came to let her out, they vanished. She called and called, but all that happened was her skin turned black. Lovely girl, hair red as yours. Anyway, the automatons came and tried to take her head, and the Falmer came and tried to eat her, so I put her in my pocket and took her home. I brought you a present,” he said suddenly, swinging to look at Darva as she walked through, carefully holding a jug of water between two small hands, face creased with concentration. She jumped and Erik caught the jug, frowning as he hefted it, while Sheogorath presented Darva with a small object like a conjurer presenting a pretty girl with a flower. “Ysgramor's salad fork!”

     Giving him an uncertain look, Darva took the present uncertainly. “This is a spoon,” she told him, confused.

     “It goes with his soup spoon—yer mum has that,” he said, patting her on the head. “Now, on with the chores! What happens without chores, eh? Chaos, that’s what! Go play!”

     “I’ll help with this one,” Erik said with a frown. “This is much too heavy for a little girl,” he scolded her, carrying the pot for her.

     “She’ll have all the boys carrying pots for her!” Sheogorath confided in a loud whisper. “Pots and torches and pitchforks! Oh, the havoc of a pretty face! I love it!”

     Ysmir poured herself some brandy, even though she knew she needed her wits about her when dealing with the Mad God—but chances were he was trying to take them anyway, so at least this way she was likely to get them back. “So that’s all you want? The Wabbajack and the hipbone?”

     He frowned. “Ye’ve been seeing other Daedra,” he accused, and she sputtered, nearly spitting out the brandy in her mouth. “Not that I minded old Hermy—he used to send the Shivering Isles some new denizens every few years—but this new one…”

     Ysmir jumped up. “Care to take this to the tower?” she asked him, extending a hand toward the stairs.

     “Tower? I love towers! People jump from towers!” he enthused, loudly. Ysmir felt dizzy for a second and found herself on the Great Porch of Dragonsreach, overlooking the northern Whiterun Plains. Her stomach lurched, but this wasn’t the first time the Mad God had decided to take her on a trip via teleportation. He liked to make it as jarring as possible to see if the poor mortal turned him- or herself inside out. She sighed, glancing about and waved weakly to one of the amazed pair of hold guards staring at them, glad the Steward wasn’t out here.

     “Men, this is Sheogorath; please back away slowly and keep people from investigating,” she told them, hoping against hope they would listen.

     “Thane,” one of them began, but then Sheogorath spoke up.

     “Harik! How’s yer uncle?” he asked.

     Harik couldn’t drag his partner away fast enough.

     “Huh. Didn’t want to talk?” he mused, gazing after the men. “Ah, well. We have things to discuss, I guess.”

     “So Miraak really did become the new Daedric Prince of Forbidden Knowledge?” Ysmir asked, sinking into one of the chairs at the long table set on the porch. Sheogorath offered her something from the platter he still held, and she took an apple slice and munched it thoughtfully. From the door, she heard a slight scuffle, and glanced over to see the guards there furiously talking and gesturing to the pair. She hoped they didn’t do anything stupid.

     “He is. How he is, I don’t know. The other Daedra don’t know. They angry, they’re confused. I think I might like this Miraak.” He popped the last piece of cheese in his mouth and frowned down at the platter, then glanced back at the door with a worryingly calculating expression. “I wonder if they have any brain pie?”

     “No one is volunteering,” she told him sharply.

     “Watch yer tone, me gal—I still need a new skipping rope,” he informed her, then seemed to turn serious, something she had never seen in him. She had seen him jovial, and murderous, and jovially murderous and murderously jovial, but never serious. He looked…sane, and it disturbed her more than she cared to admit. “Even mad men have family, Ysmir. It’s what connects us all when nothing else does. When wits go, and the ones ye were born to leave, I become family. My subjects become family. I watched ye from your first breath in that madhouse; the last of my descendants, the last of what I was. I watched your first kill, your first love, laughed when ye murdered that man they married ye to and smiled with pride when ye picked your first pocket. I watched ye sneak into Skyrim and awaken under Alduin’s gaze. I watched ye grow. Sometimes, I helped it along.”

     She stared at him, mouth dry. What was he saying?

     “Miraak…he has no family. It’s been too long for him to remember what that felt like. Like you, he was disassociated from those around him by his dragon blood. Unlike you, he never overcame it. I cannot trust a man with no sense of family, Granddaughter. But he is in our family now, whether we like it or no.”

     Ysmir stood, looking at him uncertainly. His face had changed, subtly, the hair becoming darker, the eyes softer. She saw traces of her own face in those features, and she wondered if perhaps she was truly beginning to suffer madness.

     Sheogorath’s arm lifted suddenly, an arrow appearing right next to his head. The features snapped back into the familiar face of the Mad God, and they both turned to where the fletched end of the arrow pointed, where Aela crouched behind one of the giant mechanisms that would hold a dragon. Apparently, the hold guards had called in a Companion. “Ye really shouldn’t have done that,” Sheogorath said softly, and Aela froze, her expression one of absolute terror, “Enjoy the view.”

     The woman vanished.

     “What did you do?!” she demanded, frantic.

     “She attacked me,” he said, unruffled as he turned his face to the sky. “Ah, there she is now.”

     Ysmir followed his gaze upward, eyes wide in horror as a tiny dot appeared in the sky above Whiterun Plains, growing just a bit bigger with every moment. “No,” she whispered, then turned to him, “Please don’t do this. She’s my friend; she probably just heard we were up here and got worried about me.”

     “She was protecting you,” he agreed, shading his eyes with his hand, smiling. “Very commendable. The nerve!”

     Ysmir yanked him around until his gaze met hers, not bothering to hide a bit how frantic she was. “Please!”

     Sheogorath examined her face for a moment, and sighed. “You’re no fun, sometimes,” he complained. Raising his hand again, he snapped his fingers. A sound like a deep bell came from them.

     Aela appeared a few feet above the balcony floor and landed on her rear.

     “Aela!” Ysmir cried, falling to her knees beside her friend and throwing her arms around her, nearly sobbing with relief.

     Sheogorath knelt beside them, and Aela scooted back a pace, eyeing him like he might bite. It was a possibility. “No attacking Daedric Princes,” he scolded, brandishing a finger at her. “I haven’t gotten into a fight with Hircine in a while, and I might decide it sounds entertaining. He doesn’t like it when I drive his pets mad. Cheese?” he held out the plate, which was inexplicably filled with cheese pieces once again, whimsically carved into little wolves.

     Aela shook her head violently, although whether to promise not to do that again, or whether she was refusing the cheese wasn’t completely clear.

     “Now,” the Mad God said cheerfully as he got to his feet. “I need my hipbone. On to Markarth, both of you! And don’t buy anything at the meat stall! Or, better yet, do,” he declared, and Ysmir felt dizzy again for a moment, and they found themselves in the City of Stone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Ysmir does some rummaging and Babette does some theorizing.


	15. Happy Hunting

     Babette stomped into the Sanctuary, lost in thought, passing right by a startled Astrid and Arnbjorn, down the stairs and over to Lis’s pen where she threw herself onto a chair, watching the spider shuffle about and thinking, deeply.

     The Dragonborn had known what she was. Right off the bat, all the things that made her kills drop their guard was gone. She’d had Babette tied, forced down, and with a weapon to her throat. The vampire was not entirely sure she would have been able to get away at all, let alone unscathed.

     It was…unexpected.

     "So the dragon walks Tamriel no more,” Nazir began blithely from behind her.

     “No, she does,” Babette corrected him irritably, not taking her eyes off Liz. Someone had fed the spider recently; the latest bundle of spidersilk still writhed and groaned occasionally. From the sound, Babette thought it might be an orc.

     “You didn’t kill her?” he asked, a frown in his voice. “But you’ve returned,” he added, and Babette could not tell if he was surprised that she had come back with a mission uncompleted, or that she had come back at all.

     “She saw right through me,” the vampire said, and left it at that. “I thought she would be like the others—well, maybe not like all the others. She would want to _care_ for me, to take me home to her little family of castoffs. But she knew what I was—even a bit of who I was—from the moment she saw me. She’s smart. And she’s lucky. No, worse than lucky,” she ranted, hopping to her feet and beginning to pace. Gabriella walked by and paused, watching the seeming child as she processed her mark aloud.

     “Twenty-seven assassins, including me. _Twenty-seven,_ Nazir. That’s not just luck, and that’s not just skill. They were all very different. They had different techniques, different levels of skill. Some of them had more kills behind them than you have birthdays. On top of that, she’s fighting dragons, dealing with bandits, being called on by jarls to fight groups of ruffians and giants. She’s clearing tombs. That’s not just skill, Nazir.”

     “You’ve said that,” he told her, watching her with concern on his face. She paused, and smiled, touched at the concern. This was what a family was; they cared about each other. They wanted to see the other succeed. “If it’s not skill; what is it?”

     Babette took a deep breath. “The Dragonborn is divinely protected,” she announced.

     Nazir very courteously did not burst out laughing, though she could tell he wanted to.

      “Think about it. Think on all she has done so far. She was destined to defeat that Black Dragon, so all the things she did before that were merely to prepare her for that. No matter what she did, she could not die, because she had a destiny to fulfill. The Divines _wouldn’t let her die_ before she had.”

     “But she did that. Now she should be killable as anyone else,” he said, humoring her as he took the chair she had vacated.

      “Maybe. But that level of skill she gained while unkillable? While her life was essential? That still needs to be contended with.” Babette ceased her pacing and stood, one hand to her chin as she thought. “I need to think up a new strategy.”

     “You’re not giving this up then?” Nazir pressed. Babette’s withering look was all the answer he needed.

     “I’m going to go make up some potions. If you all need something, let me know beforehand, because I’m going for an extended campaign,” she announced, heading off toward the Alchemy lab.

     “An extended campaign to what?” the Redguard called after her.

     “To find what keeps the Dragonborn from dying like a proper person. Once I know what she lives for, I’ll know how to kill her.”

     “Happy hunting,” he called.

     Babette grinned, barring her teeth. “Oh, it will be. This is going to be more fun than I’ve had in a long time.”

.

* * *

 

.

     Vlindrel Hall was just as she remembered it; dark and slightly damp, with the hum of dwarven machinery echoing faintly through the carved stone walls. Argis the Bulwark had leapt to his feet when he saw her, surprise written in every line of him. “My Thane!” he said.

     Ysmir paused, then grinned. “I thought you didn’t like to read,” she said, nodding to one of her books in his hands.

     He flushed, “I don’t,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking over her shoulder.

     Ysmir turned, but there was only Aela. Then she remembered that they had not met yet. “Oh, sorry. Argis the Bulwark, this is Aela the Huntress. Aela, Argis is my housecarl here in Markarth. Argis, Aela is my friend, and a member of the Companions in Whiterun.”

     “The Companions?” he asked, sounding a bit like she had taken that book out of his hands and whacked him in the skull with it.

     “Yes, the Companions, just like Farkas,” she repeated, “You remember Farkas, right? Big, talks like you, drank you under the table…” she reminded him, walking passed the big man and frowning. “Are you feeling alright? You look a little…flushed,” she raised her hand and felt his forehead, and he seemed to come back to himself, shaking his head and stepping back from her touch.

     “Yes, fine. There’s just been…a bit of something going around,” he said, returning his gaze to her.

     “I’ll make up a few Cure Disease potions before I go,” she said decisively, heading into the inner rooms. “I’m only going to be here for a few days. I’m rather ill-equipped to make a journey, I’m afraid.”

     “Then why did you?” he asked sensibly, he and Aela following as she went to her room. Aela seemed to be admiring the weapons on the plaques that Ysmir had added, Vlindrel Hall not having enough displays (or lighting) for her tastes. Truly, she disliked the feeling of living in a Dwemer ruin. The place needed windows, not just ventilation shafts. Argis seemed to like it well enough, and was content to stay here and keep the hall up, going out with the jarl’s soldiers to raid Foresworn camps to keep in shape. Sometimes she wondered if she should tell him to go get a dog. It couldn’t be healthy, being cooped up in this place all the time.

     Ysmir paused digging mid-way through the chest at the base of the bed in the master bedroom. “Do you remember when I found that big white jewel in a bandit’s camp and we had to go traipsing through the Temple of Meridia, fighting off oily black ghosts?”

     “Like that?” he surmised, leaning against the door.

     “Like that,” she confirmed, sighing.

     “Didn’t you say you were done with Daedra after that?” he asked, and Aela snickered.

     “The Daedra either weren’t listening, or they were, and thought that was hilarious,” Ysmir told him. “I need you to go out and find a courier,” she added, going over to the table and penning a quick note to Lydia, explaining roughly what had happened. “Give them this, to go to Lydia in Lakeview Manor in Falkreath Hold,” she doodled a little map for the courier as well. “I’ll pay him double to leave immediately, and triple to make it his top priority.”

      Argis whistled low, “You must have been taken away in a hurry, then.”

     She rolled her eyes as Aela muttered, “You have no idea.”

     “How’s Lucia?” he asked, abruptly changing the subject. “I sort of miss her running about the place.” The wistful tone made Ysmir smile slightly, and Aela to examine the man anew.

      “She’s fine. I would bring them here to visit, if it weren’t for how many there are, the number of Foresworn we’d have to cross just to get here, and the fact that I’m pretty sure Blaise would get himself thrown in Cidhna Mine before the week was out.” The big Nord cracked a smile at that, having met Blaise briefly before Ysmir decided to settle on Lakeview once and for all and stop dragging her kids around Skyrim three times a year.

      “Maybe I should come out there sometime,” he suggested, and Ysmir turned to look at him again, wondering if Sheogorath hadn’t already visited.

      “Argis, you love the Reach. Never wanted to leave it—ever—if I recall.”

      “I’m bored,” he admitted. “And I miss the mites. Markarth isn’t a great place for children, my Thane. They’re all kept close. You don’t see them running around like elsewhere.”

      She just watched him frankly for a long moment. “How do you feel about werewolves?” she finally asked. Aela’s jaw dropped open.

      Argis shrugged uncomfortably. “I suppose I might be able to kill one, if it attacked me.”

      “No, I mean what if it didn’t attack you? What if it, actually, was quite a good neighbor?” she insisted, and had the chance to see him utterly flabbergasted. She hadn’t seen that look on his face since he discovered his new Thane was not only the physical opposite of the burly warrior he expected, but a mage. Then again the first time he saw her Shout. “Could you live with friendly werewolves about, and peaceful, deer-eating vampires nearby, and dragons coming to visit? Oh, and a Khajiit. One allowed inside.”

      “I…” Argis’s jaw worked but nothing came out.

      “There are dangers, of course. Slaughterfish in the lake, necromancers coming to the altar we tore out (and extremely unhappy about that), Thalmor heading down the road to an old Talos shrine and stopping for a stab along the way, bandits, wolves, giants that are occasionally friendly and only want to trade for a cow…”

      Aela actually snickered at the look on his face, but that seemed to snap him out of whatever stupor he had fallen into. “You keep your children in that environment?” he asked, appalled.

      Ysmir shrugged, having expected the question, “Those werewolves I mentioned? They don’t like the marauding bandits either. There’s a lot of wilderness in Skyrim, Argis. Sometimes you just need to roll with what you find, rather than oppose it. Besides, you’ve met Serana; you know just because something is reputed to be bad, does not mean it is inherently evil.”

     Argis’s jaw snapped shut, a thoughtful look on his face. He had met Serana. He had tried to kill Serana. And the vampire had bard-charmed him three ways from Turdas. Honestly, Ysmir was half-convinced Serana could out-talk Miraak, who had swayed a bunch of people angry at him for enslaving them during their sleep into serving him.

     “Why don’t you go get that courier and think it over?” Aela suggested, putting a hand on his arm. Argis looked at it, then her, and nodded with a little grunt and walked off. The Huntress watched him leave, leaning around the doorframe to do so. “Good warrior, is he?” she asked casually.

     “Good enough that I wouldn’t sneeze at the opportunity to have him out at Lakeview, with everything that’s been going on,” she answered, tugging another mage robe out from under a set of Orcish armor and falling over backwards.

     Aela laughed and helped her up. “You look just like Darva when you get that expression on your face,” she teased.

     “What expression?” Ysmir fumed, raking her hair back off her face, where it had flung as she fell.

     “That mulish, affronted look that something isn’t going just how you want it to,” the Huntress replied, teasingly poking her in the ribs. “Mind if I snag him?”

     "For the Companions? Go ahead. I think he’s getting bored out of his mind here. He was reading _Notes on Racial Phylogeny_ , for Talos’s sake.” Ysmir glanced at her, wondering when her friend would collect her thoughts enough to ask about Sheogorath, but it seemed she was sufficiently distracted for the moment.

      Finally she reached the bottom of the chest (and found a particularly stunning sapphire pendant while she was at it) and pulled out the box with Pelagius’s hipbone. Divines only knew when he would come collect the thing; she’d probably be carrying it around for months. She also found Ysgramor’s Soup Spoon and the Book of Fate, which still was blank. Out of curiosity, she handed it to Aela, who opened it and frowned, then flushed.

      “Funny,” she said, slamming the book shut and thrusting it at Ysmir, who took it with raised eyebrows and watched the Huntress stomp out of the room.

      “Huh,” she said, leafing through the empty pages. She recalled what the Augur of Dunlain had said about “seeing” Darva, and wondered what he would make of the book. She set the entire box aside to take with them, intending to send the book to the College. “Wonder what has her so upset?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Some Forsworn, a chicken, a bucket, and a dragon.


	16. Foresworn and a Chicken

     “So why did the guards come running down to Jorrvaskr bleating about a Daedric Prince on the Balcony?”

      Ysmir glanced at Aela out of the corner of her eye. She’d been waiting for the question, and apparently the Huntress had only waited until the Markarth Housecarl was out of earshot to ask it. Argis had ranged ahead, checking the road for Foresworn and wildlife before his Thane traversed it.  He was being especially dedicated in his duty, and Ysmir wondered if he had really been that bored or if there wasn’t another motivation for his exemplary service.

      “Because there was a Daedric Prince on the Balcony, obviously,” she said, her tone intentionally preoccupied as she glanced at the hills above them. A goat glanced back at her and bleated. “And apparently, because they don’t listen worth a damn,” she added in a mutter as thunder rumbled to the west.

      “What were you doing with Sheogorath, Ysmir?” Aela asked, not having it. “Please tell me he doesn’t want you to be his champion.”

     Ysmir sighed. “Sheogorath…he has a different interest in me than the other Daedra. He doesn’t want a champion. Doesn’t need one.”

     Aela stopped, catching Ysmir by the arm and turning her so they were face to face, catching her when the slightly shorter woman slipped on the damp stone of the road. The mossy cobbles made a squelching sound under her leather sole. “So what interest does he have in you?”

      A slight smile tugged at the corners of the Dragonborn’s mouth. “You’re just determined to get all my secrets out of me, aren’t you?” she asked, then sighed when the Companion’s expression tightened. “Just after the Oblivion Crisis something happened in the Shivering Isles. I’m not entirely clear on what. During that time Sheogorath and his human champion…merged, or something.” Aela’s eyes widened in disbelief, lips parting as her jaw dropped, and Ysmir gave a slight scoff. She was rather fuzzy on the details of that specific incident, since what little the Mad God had been willing to say on the subject had come to her around bites of cheese. “Daedric interference must be in my blood, or something, because that human champion was my ancestor—at least according to him. He left a lover and child behind that he never returned to, but…he kept watch over them.”

      That had been the part that convinced her, that day so long ago when she sat across from the Mad God in the mind of a dead, crazed ruler. The strange, matter-of-fact tone as Sheogorath described the horror of being taken over, his mind completely eclipsed by another personality. Whoever her ancestor had been, it hadn’t appeared to bother him in the least, but Ysmir had been horrified at the thought. She shuddered, looking away as her friend continued to look down at her in disbelief.

      “Truth or madness,” she finally said, taking up their interrupted journey, “he feels rather proprietary about me, and now, about Darva. We’re all that’s left of that human champion.”

      “What did he want?” Aela queried after a long silence. The weather was quickly turning from overcast to miserable, and Ysmir glared at the sky as a chilly, misting rain descended and instantly dampened their clothing. Her mail seemed to double in weight.  

     “He came for the Wabbajack—his artifact—and Pelagius’s hipbone, which he gave me a long time ago,” Ysmir imparted, hand going automatically to feel the protrusion of that particular object from the bottom of her pack. “Really, I think he came because he wanted to talk about Miraak. He knows he’s Darva’s father, and—now that Miraak has taken Hermaeus Mora’s place—I think he’s worried.”

      “I don’t blame him; I’m worried,” Aela muttered crossly. “And now I’m even more worried. The last thing anyone needs is two Daedric Princes claiming familial rights. Especially a child.”

     “I…I think he feels bad,” Ysmir revealed hesitantly. “He made no secret that he didn’t like how I was raised, but for some reason he left me there. As if…something…told him it needed to happen.”

     Aela gave her a sharp glance. “You told Skjor you were raised in an orphanage.”

     “That was before I knew werewolves could scent lies,” she stated, catching Aela off-guard. “I don’t know why he never called me out on it.”

     There was another long pause. “When he first told me about you he said he thought you’d had a hard time of it.”

     “Curious, Aela?” she asked, glancing at her friend.

     “Yes,” the Huntress admitted with some exasperation, then regretted it as a shadowed, almost hunted look crossed the Dragonborn’s face.

     “I did spend some time in an orphanage, but I was…raised…by my grandfather, and…Let’s just say my mother’s father made Grelog the Kind look as if she deserved the name, and leave it at that,” Ysmir finally said. She had been thinking of telling the twins and Aela of her upbringing more and more often lately, but couldn’t quite get herself to do so just yet. Even Inigo didn’t know the whole story. The only one who did, ironically enough, was Miraak. Well, Miraak and Hadvar, but the Imperial soldier that had helped her escape Helgen had actually guessed what she was, rather than been told. She had always said he was smarter than people gave him credit for. 

     A raindrop slid down her forehead from her hairline, and she decided the rain was making her melancholy. A change of subject was in order. Or, rather, a shift back to the original subject was in order. “So what possessed you to fire an arrow at a Daedric Prince?”

     Aela shook her head, letting the subject of her upbringing slide for now. “He looked like a man. I thought Daedra would look like…well…Daedra. That he would have purple skin or horns or…something. I thought the guards were mistaken, and you were being held by a strange mage. Well, stranger than normal mage.”

     Ysmir shook her head. “And Vilkas says I’m reckless.”

     “You _are_ reckless,” Aela retorted, exasperated. “I think you’ve given him grey hair a time or two.”

     “Well you definitely gave me some,” Ysmir replied, glancing up alertly when Argis came jogging back toward them through the fog-like downpour, looking no less alert for being waterlogged.

     “Trouble ahead,” he declared.

     She just shrugged. “There always is.”

. 

* * *

.

     “I hate Foresworn,” Ysmir complained, running a hand through her damp hair irritably. Below them, the three raiders that held the bridge spotted them and pulled out their weapons. Beside her, she heard Aela limber up her bow, cursing about the wet, and the scrape of Argis’s sword leave the scabbard. “Stay put a moment,” she instructed Argis, then proceeded to litter the ground before them with fire runes, managing to place one practically under the foot of the closest attacker.

     Aela glowered at her as the man burst into flames, running around in circles as the licks of light and heat consumed the fur armor he sported. “Sometimes, it’s hard to get any practice in when you’re around.”

     Ysmir shrugged. “There are more of them,” she pointed to a mine entrance just above the cottage that sat perfectly placed at the end of the bridge. Foresworn, attracted by the noise and the screams of their fellows, flowed out like angry hornets. “I’ll sit back and watch, if you’d prefer.”

     “Actually, I would,” the Huntress declared with a grin, lining up and rapid-firing arrows. Three Foresworn fell in as many seconds. Argis gave her a savage grin of approval before racing down under her cover fire, hopping over the remaining fire runes.

     Ysmir glanced around, spotting a rock overhang that would afford a little shelter from the rain, at least. Finding it somewhat dry, she leaned against the cliff under it and took out a waterskin, taking a sip and grimacing. The water in Markarth always tasted of metal. So did blood. It wasn’t a connection she wanted to dwell on for very long. Pouring out the water, she glanced up at the sky, wondering why, if it was going to rain at all, it wasn’t in a way that would at least let her refill her waterskin.

     Argis ducked under the swing of the first Foresworn, bringing his arms up so the blade slid across the belly of his attacker as he passed. Then he spun, taking out a duel-wielding woman with so little effort the girl’s ancestors had to be embarrassed. He slipped a little in the wet, but regained his footing quickly enough.

     Ysmir looked down as something moved near her foot. “Oh, hello,” she told the terrified chicken.

     The Bulwark smashed his elbow into a man’s face, crushing his nose into his skull but getting pierced by the short horns that jutted from the helmet. An arrow lodged itself into his shield, and he glanced up in time to see the archer fall backward, an ebony shaft sprouting from her chest. Five more Reachmen rose behind her. With another grin, Argis launched himself into the attack, water flicking off his armor as he moved.

     “I like this one,” Aela called to Ysmir calmly, her gaze frankly admiring.

     “He's good at what he does,” Ysmir agreed, using Kyne’s Peace on the chicken and wrapping it in a linen shroud she had picked up in a tomb somewhere. She normally didn’t bother with the things, but she’d needed cushioning for the hipbone. “And he can hold his mead, as you can tell.”

     For some reason the comment made Aela flush, but Ysmir had only meant that the two had traded increasingly incoherent war stories until well into the night while the mage was trying to sleep. “Are you going to try to recruit him?” she asked, rather than embarrass the Huntress further.

     “I’ll talk to the twins about it, but I think we can get him to come around, especially if you release him from service.”

     “Have you ever tried to release a housecarl from service?” Ysmir asked, rolling her eyes. “Rayya only stared even more intently than usual when I suggested she might be happier if she found something else to do. Or stare at.”

     Aela chuckled. “Aventus swears she wasn’t giving him nightmares,” she offered, watching a Foresworn dart passed Argis and charge them, then shooting him in the knee so that he fell face-first on one of Ysmir’s runes.

     “I don’t care if she was giving him nightmares or not,” Ysmir exclaimed, “She was giving me the heebe-jibees.”

     “Is that a mage term?” Aela asked.

     “No, I picked it up from Uncle Pelagius,” Ysmir mocked. “It’s going to take forever to get home at this rate.”

     “I still need to get back to Jorrvaskr,” the Huntress agreed. “Well, if you’re in that much of a hurry, why don’t you cast Fear on these lily-livers and we’ll be on our way.”

     “Even if I didn’t muck up every spell in the Alteration school Argis would chase just them,” she groaned, starting down the hill as the last fire rune exploded when a Foresworn arrow hit it. Ysmir absently wondered what the archer had been aiming at. “Argis,” she called, and saw him glance at her momentarily, “Duck!”

     The housecarl immediately dropped to the ground as Ysmir Shouted _“Ven Gar Nos!”_ A whirlwind sprang up and lifted the remaining Reachmen from the ground, tumbling them about its dust-strewn center before flinging them into whatever unfortunate object happened to be nearby. Ysmir ducked a bucket that it flung at her. “I swear that _thu’um_ has a sense of humor,” she muttered crossly. “That always happens. And it’s always a bucket. Did you even see a bucket down there? I didn’t.”

      Aela shrugged as both women reached Argis and, as one, reached down to haul him to his feet. No mean feat with a six foot Nord in armor that probably weighed as much as a pony. “So,” he panted, looking around, “are we staying here tonight?”

     “Nah. Plenty of daylight left for more tedious walking,” Ysmir said. “Though we can loot the place, if you’d like. I think I still have a bit of shelf space.”

     A roar from the skies halted that notion, eclipsing even the thunder that rumbled almost constantly now.

     “Or…we could fight a dragon then stay the night,” Argis suggested.

     “No,” Ysmir countered, shading her eyes to look up at the beast. “A dragon attack is actually pretty convenient, right now.”

     Aela and Argis exchanged looks, then ducked behind the stone railing of the bridge as dragon fire licked over them. Ysmir held her ground, a globe-shaped ward flickering about her. That was a Thalmor invention, the spherical wards, meant to give them an edge in battle when surrounded by enemies. She wasn’t supposed to have learned them, but she hadn’t been entirely friendless as a child—there had been a few people who wanted to see her survive to adulthood. Briefly, she wondered if she should teach the wards to Colette in Winterhold, but dismissed the notion for now, gazing keenly at the dragon. There were only a few types of dragons that came, attracted to her _thu’um_ , anymore. The first were Alduin’s old supporters, those who wished revenge. The next were those wishing to gain power by managing to kill her. The third though, if this dragon was the third kind…

_“Dovahkiin! Meyz veyl ahrk luft dii uld!”_

     A slow grin slid over her features. It was the third.

     Ysmir walked to the center of the bridge, waited until the dragon hovered to Shout at her, then released her _thu’um_. _“Gol Hah Dov!”_

     The dragon landed meekly before her, eyes wide. _“Zu'u krentar,”_ he said, voice at least an octave higher than most dragons. He was about a third smaller, and under the darkening effect of the rain was quite a few shades lighter, as well.

     Ysmir crossed her arms over her chest, tapping her foot, “Do your parents know you’re out here, _goraan gein?”_

     The dragon cringed, jaw dropping just slightly and head retreating toward the body as his neck arched. Argis piped up from behind them with an incredulous, “That’s a _baby_ dragon?” which couldn’t have helped the dragonling’s pride any. It winced, shifting its wings awkwardly.

     “Worse,” Ysmir called, “what age group do you know who yells things like ‘come forth and taste my might’ to lure others into fighting?”

 _"Dreh ni wiif zey! Zu'u los sahrot!”_ the dragon cried, sounding a bit like he was whining.

     “Sure you are,” Ysmir replied, patting him on the snout. “Speak human, please; I’m not that versed in the Dragon Tongue.” Battle phrases, mostly. Things that had been yelled at her a lot.

     “It is _difficult.”_ Now the dragon was definitely whining.

     “Now, do your parents know you’re out here?” she repeated, and the dragonling sighed. “No, then. I suppose they also heard my _thu’um_ and decided not to attack me?” At the dragon’s cautious nod, she turned to her companions and grinned. “All right, you two. Come make yourselves comfortable; we’re riding the sulky adolescent home!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rough Dragon translations: 
> 
> “Dovahkiin! Meyz veyl ahrk luft dii uld!” Dragonborn, come out and face my might!  
> “Gol Hah Dov!” Bend Will  
> “Zu’u krentar.” I submit.  
> “goraan gein” little one  
> “Dreh ni wiif zey! Zu’u los sahrot!” Do not mock me! I am mighty!
> 
> Next Chapter: Aventus meets a strange girl.


	17. The Girl on the Ridge

          “…so when that happens, you give them flowers, or you run and hide for a very long time, because women do not forget,” Inigo told the two boys solemnly.

          Aventus glanced at Ma’Rakha, who shrugged. “Uncle Inigo, why are you telling us this?” the boy asked, finally, the question that had been on the tip of his tongue all afternoon.

          The blue Khajiit smiled, “Because you are thirteen now, and Lydia asked me to tell you what it means to become a man.”

          “It means I’m supposed to hide from girls when they’re angry? I already know that,” Aventus huffed.

          “Then you are well on your way to survival,” Inigo assured him. “Now, my son, it is time to learn how to use your claws.”

          Ma’Rakha looked at the little retractable needles at the ends of his fingers with bemusement. Aventus took that as his cue to flee the premises. He met Darva coming down the hill across the road from Pinewatch, like she normally did, looking very happy. Briefly, he wondered what it was she did up there, but he, like she, sometimes felt the need to be alone, and he figured he owed his little sister that much. Especially if he didn’t want her seeking out and disturbing the places he went to in order to be alone.

          Curiosity piqued, however, he waited until she passed and jogged up the hill she had just come down, finding a waterfall that went further up the mountain and a stream that flowed down into a deep little pool near a swath of green grass that came right up against a sheer cliff face. It looked like there had been hunters camped here, once, but they were long gone. Something glinted in the dirt, and he kicked at it with his toe until a shoe buckle came out, rusted with age and water.

          Aventus picked up the buckle and looked around. This could be where Darva spent her time, even though it looked relatively undisturbed. There were flowers everywhere, and half of them were picked off. With a sigh, the boy walked down the rocky stream to the pool, noting by the eggs in the bottom that it would be a very bad place to swim, despite the relative peace of the place. He wondered if he could talk Inigo into getting rid of the slaughterfish quietly, so that it could be swimmable. That way, Blaise and Alesan wouldn’t know about it either, which would make it doubly attractive to the girls.

          The boy glanced around, scratching his head. The day was relatively warm, despite the cloud cover, and the pool was making him long for a bath. The other boys told him that he smelled more, lately, when he sweat, and he wished he could ask one of the Papas about that, but they were off doing Companion work. Just his luck, he supposed.

          Turning, he began making his way down the hill, when something new caught his eye as his gaze passed over a copse of brush. He bent, digging a little near the base of a group of thorns, doing his best not to get scratched until whatever it was finally broke free of the wiry roots that held it. His eyebrows rose as he lifted it to the light: It was a gold necklace. It might have some kind of phrase engraved on it, but the dirt was caked on too thick. He rose, heading back to the stream to wash it off, when he heard a sound both familiar and strange. It was a girl, humming. While he was familiar with girls humming, he didn’t recognize the voice. Frowning, he climbed the hill again to see a Breton about his brothers’ age picking flowers alongside the pool.

          The girl paused, wiping her forehead with her arm and glancing at the pool, lips pursed. Finally, she seemed to come to a decision, and put her basket down, sitting on the soft grass and taking off her shoes.

          Realizing what she was thinking, Aventus hurried up the hill. “Don’t go in there!” he cried, and the girl jumped with a little squeak, shoe still in her hand, staring at him as if wondering where he had come from. “Slaughterfish spawn in that pool!”

          The girl peered more closely at the water. “That’s stupid of them,” she noted, glancing around, “There’s nowhere for them to go when they get big.” Aventus sighed, glad she wasn’t arguing with him or demanding proof the way his sister’s sometimes did. The girl glanced at him again and smiled, and he blushed, noting that she was really pretty. That glance didn’t make her look Blaise’s age anymore; it added at least two years. “Thank you. You saved my toes.”

          “You’re welcome,” the boy managed, throttling down his blushes. Something digging into his palm cured him of his sudden affliction of the face, and he glanced down to see the pendant, and quickly stooped to rinse it in the stream.

          “What’s that you have there?” the girl asked, interested. She leaned forward so that her head was nearly colliding with his, every once in a while reaching out to help him brush off a flake of mud or two. Finally, the last bit came off, revealing a shining ruby right in the center, surrounded by a swirling pattern that was probably what had fooled him into thinking it had writing on it. The gem caught what scattered light managed to filter through the clouds, sending bright sparks of scarlet dancing over their hands and faces. “It’s so pretty…” she breathed, and he glanced up to see a splay of crimson across her eyes, which shined in admiration.

          Impulsively, Aventus shoved it into her hands. “You should have it,” he said quickly, the words tumbling over each other.

          She looked shocked, “This looks way too valuable for you to just give it away,” she protested, hands cradling the pendant.

          “I just found it,” he replied, watching a bit of moss get swept over the stones, one at a time in rapid succession. “Besides it…it matches your eyes,” he muttered, embarrassed.

          The girl looked down at the necklace and smiled, clasping it about her neck. “What’s your name?” she asked.

          “Aventus,” he said.

          “Aventus Aretino?” she asked, sounding surprised.

          He nodded, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. He hadn’t supposed the name of the boy who summoned the Dark Brotherhood had gotten out this far, but apparently he was wrong. “I guess you’ve heard of me,” he surmised anxiously.

          “I heard you summoned the Dark Brotherhood, and that you want to join them when you grow up,” she said matter-of-factly.

          “Uh, yeah,” he replied, gazing up in surprise. There was no condemnation on her face, not even shock. “You…don’t care?” he asked, amazed and hardly daring to believe it.

          She smiled, and his heart beat a little faster. “There are definitely worse things to do with your life.”

          “I…What’s your name?” he asked, gazing at her across the pool.

          “Call me Beth,” she said, holding out her hand. Aventus took it, a little surprised at how cool it was, but then he remembered that she had been washing her hands in the stream.

          “I, uh, there’s…I live just down there. There’s food and…would you like to…”

          At that moment, the cry of a dragon split the air, and the children looked up to see one of the great beasts flying overhead. Aventus’s mouth split into a wide grin as he saw three figures perched along the column of its neck, but when he turned to reassure Beth, she was gone. He leapt to his feet, looking around in disappointment, but couldn’t spot her anywhere. Defeated, Aventus turned and trudged down the hill to greet Ysmir and whoever she had brought back with her. By the time he reached them, he had decided to keep the meeting a secret. After all, Beth had seemed shy of a dragon, and he didn’t want his little brothers scaring her away.

 

* * *

 

 

          Babette watched from a rise as the Dragonborn hopped off the dragon she rode, followed quickly by a lithe woman in Ancient Nord Armor, and a big man who fell back and looked queasy. She chuckled, watching his reaction. Golden light arched over the Dragonborn’s hand, and he straightened, looking steadier.

          Aventus slowed when he reached the edge of the crowd, sort of hovering around the edges as he waited for the younger children to work out their exuberance. Babette tilted her head to the side; she’d had no idea there were so many.

          Ysmir spotted him and smiled, holding out an arm, which he walked into willingly, returning the Dragonborn’s embrace as if she truly were his mother, or at least a beloved older sister. The vampire girl sat on her rock high up the cliff, thinking and absently fingering the amulet the boy had given “Beth,” then scowling a bit and shoving the bright piece of jewelry beneath her clothing before its shine gave away her position.

          He had said it matched her eyes.

          She smiled a bit, then sighed and rubbed her brow. Aventus Arentino…she had not expected the Dragonborn to adopt the boy. This was even more complicated than she had thought. He was a future member, and there were rules, things a member of the Dark Brotherhood just did not do to the family members of fellow assassins. Years ago, she had learned that the Five Tenants were only the written version of the rules, but simply stated the Brotherhood was a family, and one did not deliberately cause a member of the family such pain as loosing yet another mother would to Aventus.

          The little vampire clenched her jaw, feeling her fangs prick at the inside of her lower lip. He wasn’t a member yet, she thought stubbornly.

          But he might never be, if this contract was carried out. They had few enough members as it was, thanks in no small part to her target.

          “Ah, Sithis,” she muttered, watching as the Dragonborn handed a chicken—and what was the woman doing with a chicken?—to another child, a girl with brown hair who gave it a pat and walked over to an enclosure of animals that seemed curiously unimpressed with the presence of the dragon, releasing it among the chickens already there. It paused for a moment, looked around, and then settled its feathers and began to peck at the ground. Babette snickered at the thought of the chicken on the back of the dragon, the wind through its feathers as it tried to panic, and her mark having to fight just to keep it from plunging to its death thousands of lengths below.

          The wind changed direction, and the vampire froze, listening.

          “…riding the things!...really has abandoned…”

          The man that spoke was easy to find, hidden, as she was, in the rocky prominences of the mountain. He watched the Dragonborn’s home with a spy glass, laying on his stomach, muttering to himself. A Nord, broad in the shoulder and apparently small in sense, he was half again the size of Arnbjorn.

          “I wish Garrot would come back with that food,” he sighed as Babette stood openly behind him, hands on her hips. This dolt was barely concealed from anything, and there was almost no chance the Dragonborn had missed seeing him as she flew over on that dragon. She could only think that this meant the Dragonborn knew not only that she was being watched, but by whom, and that she either thought them too much trouble to chase down, or completely ineffectual. At the moment, Babette was betting on the latter.

          “A bit green, are you?” she asked scathingly.

          The man startled so badly he nearly dropped the spyglass, batting it from one hand to the other until he managed to catch it. He gaped at her. “Where did you come from?”

          “If you had any skill in sneaking or mountain climbing, you would already know,” she informed him, for there was only one way onto this ledge besides the narrow goat path he had apparently used. A small camp was pressed up back against the cliff wall, a cold camp with no fire and only the basic amenities. The man was pitiful, but she had to give him that much credit, at least. Or perhaps that was the work of his absent partner.

          He glanced back down at the house. “Are you one of hers? The Traitor’s?”

          “Traitor?” she repeated, interested. “No, I’m not one of the Dragonborn’s pet children. Who exactly are you?”

          “Bjalf,” he answered, without even thinking twice about it. Babette repressed a sigh; Aventus had better instincts than this idiot, and the boy was barely thirteen.

          “And?” she prompted.

          “And what?” he asked, confused and taken completely off-guard by this strange little girl that suddenly appeared and started interrogating him.

          “Why are you spying on that house, Bjalf?” she supplied, speaking slowly as she would to an imbecile.

          “I…” he glanced away and seemed to recover himself, “You would not understand. Run along and play.”

          She grinned, even as she gritted her teeth at the dismissal, “Oh, should I go see if one of _those_ children wants to play with me? We can play ‘spot the man on the ridge.’”

          Bjalf sat up sharply. “No! Don’t do that. I can’t tell you why we’re here, but I can promise that it’s important.”

          Babette was growing bored of this, and was long passed wishing to not need to listen this spy’s stupidity. She leaned over, fixing him with an unblinking stare. Bjalf gazed up into her eyes, which seemed to grow, becoming, for a moment, everything, until he blinked, and shook his head in befuddlement. The girl leaned back, just looking at him. The girl, right. She was his friend. She had a right to know what he was doing, out in the middle of nowhere like this.

          “I’m a member of the Blades,” he began, and her eyes widened in disbelief, “This is my first mission, with my superior. They didn’t think I was ready to slay dragons yet, so they sent me to watch the Traitor Dragonborn, and they were right! She just rode a dragon down to her house, and—look at that! She let it go. It’s flying away,” he said, indignation in every line of him.

          “So…the Blades want to kill the Dragonborn?” Babette surmised, her interest caught once again.

          “Oh, no,” he hastily assured her, much to her disappointment. “We need her. If she will only come around…and she will, eventually. I mean, how long can one deal with creatures as treacherous as dragons before they turn on you? One will do something she can’t excuse, and she’ll come back and lead us like she’s supposed to.”

          Babette sneered, “They only let you in for your size, right?” she asked the foolish man, who was, honestly, one of the largest Nords she had ever seen. If he had any aim whatsoever (and others managed to stay out of his way) he could probably severely wound a dragon with one hit. He blustered a bit, but she ignored it in favor of her own thoughts. Finally, he seemed to run out of words, and she made up her mind.

          “What are you doing up here, anyway?” he finally asked her.

          “Apparently, getting a snack,” she replied, and lunged. Bjalf gave a short, strangled cry, but she was already on him, gazing into his face until he fell under her spell and simply sat quietly as she sank her fangs into his neck. His blood was thick, and just a bit sour, but she hadn’t eaten anything but blood potions for a few days, and gulped her fill.

          He was still alive when she backed away—he was so large he could live through the small amount of blood loss she took with her feeding. A savage slice with his dagger fixed that, and nicely concealed the tiny pinpricks of her teeth. Babette left him bleeding on the ridge, and climbed back up to a place she could overlook both his camp and the house, taking the spyglass with her and playing with it absently as she listened to him gasp his last.

          The absent Garrot returned a good while later, recently cooked goat on the long wooden plate he carried. He dropped it with a hollow clatter when he saw his simpleton of a partner, freshly dead and rapidly cooling as the hour grew late on this overcast day. Babette idly watched him mourn, musing that someone who fought dragons so often should be more inured to the death of a comrade.

          The Blade stopped, gazing up at the house, where her mark could clearly be spotted, thanks to that fabulous, blood-red hair, walking to the house from somewhere below their perch. His hands clenched into fists, he growled out “Dragonborn…”

          Babette’s eyebrows rose. This could prove a more useful encounter than just as a meal break. Garrot hefted Bjalf’s corpse up and onto his shoulders, heading down the mountain without even packing up what few belongings must certainly be there. Then again, he would probably have to choose between carrying the large corpse or anything else. The assassin watched him go, fiddling with the necklace Aventus had given her. The big Nord’s blood, splashed across the rocks before her, caught the light of the westerning sun, and she smiled, turning the pendant this way and that.

          Her eyes weren’t the only thing it matched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: At the Temple of Miraak, life proceeds as normal for a giant cult rebuilding an ancient city in an icy, ash-infested wilderness.


	18. The Business of the Temple

          Miraak gazed up at the suspended skeleton of a dragon, taken from the many that littered the ground outside his temple. Probably one of the further ones, since he rather liked having visitors run the gauntlet of the ones he had managed to kill before Hermaeus Mora pulled him from the fight. He wondered, sometimes, if he should have died then, if things would have been better. He never would have spent four millennia in Apocrypha, watching the others around him come and fade in their search for whatever it was that brought them. Perhaps his death would have become an inspiration to those Nords, like Gormlaith, that later opposed their dragon overlords.

          Well, no matter.

          He looked around, noting the masked figures that scurried to and fro, all unaware of his invisible, ethereal form among them. There were so many more than before. He wondered how many were here because of his original call, and how many because they discovered he was the new Daedric Prince of Knowledge and Fate. Many of them were Dunmer, but most were Nords, even a few Skaal, which he had not expected. He found he could see through their masks, both physical and otherwise. Their hopes, fears, desires; was this how Mora had always seen mortals? Miraak shook his head at the thought of how foolish he had been, to think he could hide something from a creature whose very vision was the inner thoughts of those he beheld.

          Not that he’d ever admit that out loud. It had come his way in the end, after all.

          A group of scantily clad women appeared, loudly complaining as they were ushered out by one of his lieutenants. They whined about how far they had come to see him. Him. That was interesting; he hadn’t had women acting this way about him since he was a Dragon Priest, but these were obviously of the same ilk, wanting only the power he provided, no matter what kind of man he was. Miraak shook his head; some things transcended the ages, he supposed.

          A pair of children ran passed, giggling as they chased each other to and fro, and he paused. There had been no children here last time he was around. Curious, he began walking closer to the groups of milling women, both masked and not, that he had avoided before in favor of eavesdropping on the warriors and workers. Several were talking of their children, and the village above.

          Since when had there been a village?

          Frowning, Miraak quickened his step, through the winding passages, both old and new, of his temple until he reached the office of his steward. Turinmar, the aforementioned steward, was not in at the moment. That was alright, as he preferred to find what he wanted himself, then see how much his underlings actually reported to him. Miraak closed the door behind him, not becoming visible with the action by sheer magical power. He’d gotten a lot of that from Mora, and had spent a great deal of time searching through magic tomes for spells he never could have cast before, most of them thought impossible for a single caster. There were many old, powerful spells now lost to the world, and he the only mage that could cast them. In fact he could probably rival Ysmir her Flame Cloak by now, if only he could find a way to get the smell of brimstone out of his clothes afterward.

          Miraak looked around, edging away from a stack of account books that had been halfway through his ethereal leg. Just because nothing could harm him didn’t mean the paper didn’t itch. What should have been a spacious office was instead a crowded, cramped space, crammed full of books and ledgers, scrolls and piles of parchment, all covered with a dense, scrawled hand. Careful not to disturb whatever mysterious organization that must be there, if only inside Turinmar’s head, Miraak made his way to the desk, scanning the contents until he found the correct pile, and leafed through the latest changes made to the Temple.

          There was a village. It was rustic yet, having only been started late last month, but it contained the families of his cultists, those that still wished to associate with them. Numbers—Turinmar always had numbers. Five hundred and twelve cultists in the village rather than the temple barracks: two hundred fifty-three wives: eighty-nine husbands: forty-five elderly dependents.

          Sixty-seven children.

          Miraak sat in Turinmar’s chair, a little stunned at the revelation. He hadn’t had a community this size depending on him since…well, ever. Even when he was a Dragon Priest, Vahlok was more the kind to bring in families, simply by virtue of having three decades on the younger priest, who some considered an upstart for climbing through the ranks so quickly. Now, though…Nearly a thousand people. And that didn’t include the hangers-on that inevitably came with such gatherings; thieves and dealers, whores and camp followers, beggars and those wishing to be taken in as servants.

          His perusing called up another list. Seventeen blacksmiths, two of them masters of their craft. Carpenters, stonemasons, cooks, alchemists…there was everything to make this a real, thriving settlement. At the moment, most of the craftsmen seemed to be working on his temple, even those who had not yet decided to don the mask of his faithful.

          Footsteps alerted him to Turinmar’s return. Miraak hastily put the papers back, rising from the chair and preparing to become visible, but a new voice with his steward made him pause. Backing into one of the myriad little corridors between piles of paperwork, Miraak watched as the haggard-looking Dark Elf pushed his way inside, obviously trying to close the door on whoever was with him, to no avail. A large Nord woman pushed her way in behind him, looking as if she hadn’t even noticed him trying to shut her out.

          “Really, Turinmar! We have more than enough workmen that we could have all the houses we need in little more than a week,” she said, lips tight with irritation.

          His steward sighed, running a fine-boned hand through long, slightly oily black hair. “Dorte, please. You know how important this work is.”

          The woman—Dorte—put her hands on her hips. From her clothing, she obviously wasn’t here out of devotion to him. “If all you say is true, this Miraak is older than the Empire. I doubt he would care if work stopped for a week.”

          Turinmar paled and glanced around. “Shhh, woman!”

          Dorte snorted. “How he expects anyone to do a good day’s work when they have holes in their half-constructed roof letting in ash and snow is beyond me. How is anyone supposed to get anything done when they’re worrying about their child getting sick? Or about attacks by Ash Spawn or Reikling raids? Are we important to him or are we not?”

          The poor Dunmer rubbed his face tiredly. “I’ll see what can be allocated, Dorte, but we’re on a schedule, you know. Perhaps, if you would go and leave a respectful prayer at the temple, Miraak himself will decree something.”

          Her snort of derision told Miraak exactly what she thought of that idea. Part of him was insulted, but mostly he was amused. Unlike the other Dragon Priest, he had never felt the urge to simply flaunt his power every time there was an opportunity. Such displays needed to be given at carefully planned times, or particularly opportune moments. People tended to become unimpressed with the familiar, so one should never show their abilities too often. It was best to do an impressive display only once in a while, showing no effort in doing so, and letting the tale spread and grow on its own. Miraak’s mother had taught him that, long before she realized her son would never follow in her footsteps as a master bard.

          Odd. He hadn’t thought of his mother in centuries.

          He watched Dorte and Turinmar argue for a few more moments, lost in his own thoughts. Perhaps it was only that in Apocrypha, he had focused on keeping abreast of what was happening in the world without him, and on amassing power. And, of course, on not becoming a Seeker himself. Thinking on his life before he became a Dragon Priest had been futile even when he had still been faithfully serving Alduin. His mother had been long gone by then; invited to play at the city now called Labyrinthian, she had never come back out.

          Futile thoughts, indeed.

          His wandering attention was regained as Dorte slammed the door behind her, and Turinmar fell into his chair with an explosive sigh, gazing over the papers on his desk with a somewhat hopeless expression. Miraak had seen that look before, when the man was frantically trying to arrange the numbers to best fit every problem. He had driven the elf to that look several times, and he found himself regretting it. Constant stress was no way to repay a man that had been among your first faithful, and remained after two hundred years.

          On the other hand, the elf was dreadfully easy to goad, and Miraak was in a good mood.

          “Tired, Turinmar?” he asked, allowing the invisibility to dissipate when he reached the center of the room.

          The Dunmer jumped, red eyes wide. “My lord!” he squeaked, trying to bow and slamming his head on the desk. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

          “Obviously,” Miraak drawled.

          “Your temple is coming along quickly, sire,” the man said, jumping to his feet and looking for the relevant paperwork while he absently rubbed the growing bruise on his forehead. “At this rate, we should be done with the inner sanctum by midsummer.”

          “And the village?” Miraak asked, his tone deliberately bland.

          “The…village, sire?” Turinmar repeated, starting to sweat. When his master simply continued to stand there, mask pointed patiently in his direction, the elf stammered, “The-the cultists were not welcome in Raven Rock, you see, and the Redoran Guards began throwing out anyone with any association to the temple. Your followers began asking permission to move their families into the temple sleeping quarters with them, as their campsites were being overrun with Ash Spawn and Rieklings. There simply wasn’t enough room in the temple, you see, so I had some of the scouts find a likely spot nearby for a large, fortified camp. But they weren’t _happy_ with a fortified camp; they live here now and they wanted real homes to return to when the work was done, you see.” He paused, looking very much as if he wanted to cringe, nervous and a little out of breath from the long, quickly given explanation.

          Miraak waited a long moment before replying. “Very good then.”

          “I’m sorry, sire, I—what?” he halted mid-apology, staring.

          “Very good,” Miraak repeated. “You’ve anticipated my wishes long before I voiced them, as usual. I wasn’t planning on having a city here until the temple was finished, but it makes it so much more convenient when the workers are comfortable. Things tend to go so much faster and smoother, with fewer accidents and less complaint.”

          “I…yes, sire,” the dumbfounded Dark Elf replied.

          Miraak took the papers from Turinmar’s limp fingers, pretending to skim through the progress on the temple. The place was looking very like the city-complex it once was, with the notable exception of the dragon bones, of course. Maps were last, marked carefully in precisely inked notations the depth of certain parts of the temple, and the myriad areas where cave-ins or rubble made progress slow. Most of those areas were away from the main temple, so were being ignored for the moment. Wordlessly, he walked to the desk and pulled out a stick of graphite, circling places in the less-worked on sections. Turinmar craned his neck to watch, obviously wondering what the Daedra was doing.

          “How goes work on the village, then?” Miraak asked.

          His steward flinched. “Slowly, milord. You see, most of the builders are stationed within the temple.”

          “With their families outside? They cannot be very happy about that,” he commented, smiling a little behind his mask. Putting down the graphite, he snagged a plain parchment and quill and began writing up an ordinance.

          “I—no, sire.”

          “This was once the grandest city in the area,” he told Turinmar. “I would like to see it so again. Work on the temple is progressing ahead of schedule by more than a month; give the workers half-days for a few weeks, so that they can focus on the village, as well.” He rolled up the parchment declaring just that and handed it to his steward. “I’ve circled the old city tunnels on the map. If you clear out the cave-ins, you can see what is still livable. Take the guards, though; there are probably draugr down there.”

          “Of course, sire.”

          “Now, what are these hundred followers stationed in Skyrim for?” he asked, eyes scanning the allocation page.

          Now Turinmar did cringe. “I regret to inform you, sire, that we still are unable to defeat the False Dragonborn.”

          Miraak paused, “The what?”

          The Dark Elf blinked. “Reports came in of a woman calling herself Dragonborn, you see. She can’t be, of course, as you are the true Dragonborn, but she’s made quite a name for herself, and people across Tamriel believe—”

          “Turinmar,” Miraak interrupted flatly, “Have you been sending my followers to die against this woman?”

          He winced, “Technically, sire, Zirfar was. He was the one that initially heard the rumors and sought to squash them, you see.”

          “And where is Zirfar now?”

          “He…he died sire, when the woman herself attacked the temple,” Turinmar informed him, looking as tense as Miraak had ever seen him.

          “Oh, good. Saves me the trouble of doing it myself,” the Daedric Prince replied, and Turinmar goggled.

          “You…do not wish the False Dragonborn to be put down? Even after she attacked the temple?” he ventured squeakily, not believing his dark, pointy ears.

          Miraak snorted, “If she were false, I would kill her myself. As she is truly Dragonborn, there is no need.”

          “She,” the elf swallowed, “She truly is like you?”

          He laughed at the thought, “If she were some thousand years older and a Daedric Prince, then I would say yes, but no, she is not like me. But I have met her, and we have fought. I respect what power she does have, and the deeds she has accomplished.” He tossed the papers back on the desk. “None of you are a match for her; bring those followers back home.”

          “Th-there may be some resistance, you see, to giving up the old campaign,” the Dunmer ventured hesitantly.

          “Then tell them the next follower of mine that attacks her or anyone associated with her will have his head crushed like a jazbay grape,” he said coldly. He could tell his faithful steward was taken aback by his vehemence, but he didn’t care. He could feel Apocrypha tugging at him, and needed to make his point quickly. He wasn’t worried about Ysmir; she could take care of herself. But there were other ways to make a woman surrender than defeating her in battle, and he would tear open the skull of any man or woman that hurt his daughter. He sighed quietly, and reached out to put his hand on his steward’s shoulder, which either surprised or terrified the man into freezing in place. “Get some rest, Turinmar. You’re no good to me half-dead.”

          Miraak walked toward the door, intending to return before he reached it, but paused, half in and half out of fading to Oblivion. “Oh, and Turinmar? Put up a stone wall around the village first. Those dammed Rieklings are a pain in the ass.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: Ysmir goes to High Hrothgar to talk to the Greybeards about Darva.


	19. Seven Thousand Steps

         Something was going on with Aventus. Ysmir watched, eyes narrowed, as the boy slipped off beyond Pinewatch. He had done that several times in the last few days, finishing his chores in record time and whispering to Ma’Rakha every time he had the chance, which wasn’t often, as Inigo was planning another “survival” expedition. At any rate, Ysmir had barely exchanged two words a day with the boy since she came home, as he would be rushing off to…wherever he was going the moment he could get away.

         And this time he was taking a picnic basket.

         “Ah, young love,” Inigo murmured, padding up silently beside her.

         “What?” Ysmir asked, her head whipping around so fast her hair whacked her friend in the face.

         “Pleh!” he spat, extracting several scarlet strands from his whiskers. “I only meant that the young one has been creeping off to see a girl every day.”

         “A girl?” she repeated dumbly, gaze bouncing from the hill back to Inigo, “What girl?”

         The blue Khajiit shrugged. “Probably a hunter’s daughter. They bring their children with them sometimes.”

         Ysmir watched the teenager rapidly disappearing with some consternation. “Why wouldn’t he tell me?”

         “You are his mother; why _would_ he tell you?” the Khajiit countered. “Young love is a fragile, awkward thing; how much more awkward when telling one’s mother about it?”

         The woman sighed, deliberately looking away. “I suppose you’re right. I never…well, I suppose my background makes things like this strange to me. He seems too young for it.”

         “My background is no better. There were no girls in the orphanage with my brother and me. And the village girls were mostly Imperials,” he confided, looking forlorn. Ysmir gave him a sympathetic smile for what they had both missed out on, not having normal, or even especially pleasant, childhoods.

         “I just…hope his first romance doesn’t turn into his first heartache,” she fretted.

         “That is nearly inevitable, unless they both loose interest together. Chances are, her parents will go hunt another area, or decide this place is too dangerous, and will leave.”

         Ysmir winced. For a few moments they were silent, each thinking their own thoughts. “I wonder what she’s like,” the Dragonborn finally ventured.

         “I spotted her once,” Inigo told her, “she is very pretty, for a human girl.”

         Ysmir grinned, “I didn’t know you noticed human pretty, Inigo.”

         He looked mildly affronted. “Of course I notice pretty. Lydia is pretty. You are pretty, even if you do have a habit of carrying around eating utensils.”

         “Oh, am I?” she persisted, fluttering her eyelashes playfully.

         Inigo shifted uncomfortably, “You have not by chance met with a dragon today, have you?” he asked, and Ysmir laughed.

         “Relax, Inigo, we both know I like my men with less fur,” she teased.

         “Strange thing for a woman who has two werewolf lovers to say,” he pointed out.

         Ysmir shrugged, “I don’t exactly cuddle up to them when they’re like that,” she said, beginning to walk back toward the house.

         “Even if you do not, they are still Nord men—I do not see much difference.”

         “Very funny,” she said, stretching her arms up. “I think I’m getting too settled for this adventuring thing. Every time I leave I just can’t wait to get back here!”

         “I am not surprised. You looked for a home, Ysmir, wherever we travelled. Even back when we first met, I knew you wanted somewhere to belong,” he stopped and turned to her, suddenly serious. “It makes me happier than you can know that my good friend Ysmir finally has a place of her own, and that she allows me to share it as her friend.”

         Ysmir smiled, surprisingly touched. It was true that Inigo was her oldest friend here, even if she didn’t remember much of what happened after his arrow struck her, and she fell and knocked her head on a rock. Of all her friends, he was the only one that knew the name she had born throughout her childhood. In fact, Inigo probably knew more about her than all her other friends combined.

         “Well, since I still have one more place to go, would you be willing to journey with me, Inigo? Normally, I wouldn’t ask, but since Argis seems to be throwing himself into farm work so…enthusiastically…” she trailed off, watching the man in question scowl down at their cow as Lucia laughingly tried to show him how to milk it. A growing bruise on his arm showed where the bovine had kicked him last time he had tried.

         “I would be honored, my friend. I assume we go once again to discover what the little one’s fate will be?” he half-asked, tilting his head to the side.

         “Correct. Vil was right, and we’re going to go where he said we should have started.”

         Inigo’s pointed ears seemed to droop, “Not the big stairs…”

         “Afraid so,” she said with an apologetic smile. “Inigo, we’re going to High Hrothgar.”

.

* * *

. 

         “I hate these stairs!” Inigo complained, peering over the edge of the cliff and giving a little shudder. “I say we slide back down.”

         Ysmir laughed, taking off her helmet and shaking the snow off it. The dead troll behind them had apparently loosened the snow pack before he jumped down to say hello, and it had given way just as she walked under it. Luckily, Inigo had been spared to dig her out. “It’s always an adventure,” she replied, grinning. “Trolls must really love this pass, though. I swear there’s a troll here every time I come up.”

         “Remember that one time a dragon came down and ate it before we even reached the pass?”

         She wrinkled her nose in remembered irritation, “Yes. It flew away before I could kill it and get its soul.”

         Inigo cringed, “How many dragon souls do you need? I mean, when is enough enough? Watch you do not get addicted.”

         Ysmir gazed at him a moment, startled. “Come to think of it, I haven’t needed to kill a dragon in…I don’t even remember the last time I killed a dragon. I’m usually able to talk some sense into them before it comes to killing.”

         “There are still a few Alduin supporters out there,” he reminded her, gazing up at the monastery as it came into view. His eyes widened perceptively, “It seems we were expected.”

         “What?” Ysmir squinted through the snow falling thickly around them to spot Arngeir standing in the shelter of one of the doors, hands folded in his sleeves, patient as a statue. She climbed the last steps with a vague feeling of trepidation, giving the elder Tongue a slight bow of respect. “Arngeir.”

         “Dragonborn, I thought you might be coming to us,” he said, and Ysmir was vaguely alarmed to sense tension in him. Arngeir was not the most peaceful of the Greybeards, having strong emotions and opinions, especially where the Blades were concerned, but she had never sensed this kind of upheaval in him.

         “Should I even ask why?” she wondered aloud.

         “Perhaps you should ask it inside, out of the cold,” the Khajiit prompted. Ysmir glanced at Arngeir, who nodded his wizened, bearded head and turned to go inside. Inigo sighed as they entered, his armored shoulders drooping in relief.

         “Come, Dragonborn. We will discuss this in the dining hall, where the others can join us,” her mentor said, suiting actions to words and heading in that direction.

         “What about Paarthurnax?” she asked, putting her helmet under one arm and shaking out her braid with the other. Her hair was long enough now that she usually braided it in a crown about her head, both to keep it out of the way and to add that little bit of extra padding.

         “He is not here, currently. He keeps watch over the other dragons. There are those among them that are having a difficult time accepting that they no longer need rule mortals.”

         “I’ve met them,” she informed him dryly. “I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that they had the Dragon Priests rule for them, and aren’t actually in the habit of direct dominion.”

         They reached the dining room, and through the seeming unspoken accord of the Greybeards, all the others were already there. Ysmir greeted them warmly, and they nodded and smiled their welcome, even if that undercurrent of tension ran throughout the room. Behind her, Inigo muttered something about the fur on his tail standing on-end.

         “Dragonborn…” Arngeir trailed off a moment, looking down at the table with a hand to his chin, thinking. “Just as we sense the whisper of a Word of Power, we also sense the currents of a dragon’s soul. Usually, we know a _Dovahkiin_ has awakened by the feel of their first _thu’um_. There has only ever been one known Dragonborn in an age, but lately we’ve felt…something. We’ve been listening, sensing the movements of the Dragonborn Miraak in the east, but for the past few months, to the south—”

         “You’ve been sensing my daughter,” she told them without preamble.

         The mountain shook as the three silent Greybeards muttered in surprise. Inigo clamped his hands over his ears and hissed, crouching, but Ysmir sat through it stoically. When the murmurs subsided, she continued. “I admit that I am hoping I’m wrong about her being Dovahkiin. My hope is that she is just a Tongue, like some others have suggested. Could she be?”

         The Greybeards looked at each other. “It is possible. We do feel it when a person is gifted with the Voice, and manages a _thu’um_ on their own. We still feel Ulfric, when he uses the gift we taught him for war. This…it is so slight, a bare whisper. That is probably because of her age. When she is older, then we will be able to know for sure—”

 _“Dovahsebrom,”_ Wulfgar whispered, _“mu vis mindok dasiik waan kon los drun het.”_

         Inigo moaned, falling to his knees, and Ysmir was distracted for a moment as she healed him, then suggested he go to the other wing and lay down. He nodded so emphatically his ears flopped, a bit of blood still running from one, and hustled from the room like his tail was on fire. Ysmir took a deep breath, turning to look at Wulfgar, who the others were gazing at in surprise. “What did he say?”

         “My brother has suggested that you bring the child to us,” Arngeir stated, sounding as if he could not believe it.

         Ysmir felt the same way, trying to imagine her active, color-loving child running around the grey, dark monastery. “You want me to bring Darva here?”

         He nodded, and Arngeir looked thoughtful. “It is true we might be able to know sooner if we met the girl, but I admit, I do not like the thought of a child on the Steps.”

 _“Sahqo dovah aal frey hi,”_ Wulfgar whispered. Ysmir winced and hoped Inigo was far enough away for his eardrums to stay intact.

         Arngeir turned back to her from regarding Wulfgar, “He suggests that the red dragon might aid you,” he translated.

         The Dragonborn sat back thoughtfully. “He might.”

         After a moment, Borri nodded, apparently deciding they had said all they needed to say, and rose, heading back to his meditation. The others followed suit. “Your friend may need your aid again, Dragonborn,” Arngeir reminded her, and Ysmir jumped up to rush to Inigo.

         She found him on one of the beds, as she had suggested, with a pillow over his head, tightly pressed against his ears. She smiled slightly and tugged at it. “It’s over.”

         “Good,” he said, glaring at her a little. “When I agreed to accompany you, I did not expect to have my ears burst for my trouble.”

         “Neither did I, or I would have suggested you wait over here in the first place. Or better yet, in one of the courtyard towers,” she sank down next to him and cupped her hands over his ears as golden light spun around them. “They want me to bring Darva to them.”

         “So they are calling her Dragonborn,” he said, ears drooping for an entirely different reason.

         “No. They don’t know what she is, yet. They want to meet her to be able to tell.” Her hands dropped, and she sighed. “By the Nine, I hope she’s just a Tongue. If she just has the power of the Voice, she’s in no danger. I mean, I would still have to train her, but then she wouldn’t be Dragonborn, and will never have to face Alduin.”

         Inigo sat up and enfolded her in a hug. “There, there, old friend. Honey-bee will be fine. After all, she has a dragon for a mother, a pack of werewolves for a family, and an incredibly handsome and brave Khajiit uncle.”

         Ysmir laughed, she couldn’t help it. “Not to mention Erik wrapped around her finger, Lydia waiting to bash in the head of anyone foolish enough to attack, Argis even more eager for a fight than Lydia, and Precious’s protective instincts.”

         “You are forgetting the children themselves; they will not go anywhere without a fight, and have had some of the best teachers in Skyrim, if I do say so myself. They will be fine, Ysmir. Nothing bad is getting close to that house, or the people who live there, be it dragon, man, or mer. It will be alright.”

         “Thanks, Inigo,” she said, sitting up and wiping a tear from her cheek with a smile. “You always know how to make me feel better.”

.

* * *

.

         Back at the house, Darva looked up from setting the table and nearly dropped the plate she held. Beside her, Precious growled.

         “What’s the matter?” Alesan asked as he walked in with the cups, glancing down at the ice wolf.

         “This is Darva and Alesan,” Aventus said, turning to smile at the pretty girl beside him. “Guys, this is Beth.”

         The girl smiled, reaching up to stroke a stunning pendant she wore. “Hello. I’m _so_ pleased to meet you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Ysmir meets yet another sulky teenager and Darva has a nap.


	20. Whirlwind at High Hrothgar

               A familiar sight greeted Ysmir as they descended the bottommost of the Seven Thousand Steps; a figure in exotically cut leather robes, sporting a spiked bone mask that gleamed softly in the late morning sunlight. She sighed, pulled out a Scroll of Paralysis and cast it at her (she thought it was a her, although she had looted bodies before to find that what she thought was a her was actually an elven male). The cultist fell to the ground, the spell weaving about her form, and Ysmir walked over and crouched next to her, rolling her over to get a better look. Not much to see, really; seen one cultist, seen them all.

               “Still can’t get your Alteration spells to work, eh?” Inigo asked her teasingly. She shot him an irate look before walking around the downed cultist.

               “You must be new; normally you people come at me three or four at a time, and I still kill you all,” she told the cultist, then paused, seeing a note sticking out from the front fold of the garb, as if deliberately placed for this instance. Curious, she pulled it out and unfolded it.

 _“All hostilities against the Dragonborn known as Ysmir are to cease immediately, by direct order of Lord Miraak. Anyone found disobeying this order will have his skull crushed. Those in Skyrim for this sole purpose are to return immediately. Recruiters are given leave to remain.”_ Signed “Turinmar.”

               “Oddly specific,” Inigo observed, reading over her shoulder.

               “About time he got around to that,” she muttered, wondering just who “Turinmar” was while she folded up the order and shoved it in her belt pouch. “So how about you?” she asked the cultist, who twitched as the spell started losing its effect, “are you here to have your skull crushed?”

               “N-n-nnn-no,” the cultist managed, relaxing out of the spell before climbing warily to her feet. “I’m here under different orders. Steward Turinmar wishes you to know that our blades will no longer be raised against you, so that if you meet us again, you leave us in peace.”

               Inigo glanced back up the mountain. “Did that Shouting do something to what was between my ears, too?” Ysmir shook her head, although she agreed with the sentiment.

               “He also wishes to tender his apologies for the continued attacks upon your person, as it has been revealed to us that you are not a False Dragonborn, but in fact Dragonborn in truth. Although nowhere near as powerful as our master,” she added stubbornly, voice falling out of the tone she had used to recite her missive and making her sound much younger.

               Ysmir crossed her arms, irked. “How old are you?” she asked.

               The cultist stiffened, squaring her shoulders and clenching her hands into fists. “Old enough,” she replied petulantly.

               The Dragonborn released an explosive sigh and turned to Inigo, “Why have I been forced to deal with so many sulky adolescents lately? My children; Balgruuf’s children; dragons…What did I do to deserve this?”

               Her companion shrugged, “Perhaps it is a warning from the Divines of what is to come.”

               “Talos forefend,” she shuddered. Turning back to the teenager (who seemed somewhat affronted), she asked, “So what made you dupes come to your senses?”

               “A direct decree by Master Miraak,” she replied, sounding as if she were grinding her teeth. “He said that if you truly were a False Dragonborn, he would kill you himself, but as you do not claim what is not yours, there is no need to throw our lives away facing you.”

               “Well, that was big of him,” Ysmir replied ironically, not rolling her eyes with effort. “Thank you for informing me,” she added to the girl, who twitched a little in surprise and merely watched them as they continued on passed her. “I can see why they sent her,” Ysmir told the Khajiit, who glanced at the young cultist over his shoulder.

               “Indeed,” he agreed. “Even with a mask, there is no hiding what that one is thinking.”

               “I think she hates me a little,” Ysmir surmised, lips pursed in thought.

               “She is jealous of you,” Inigo countered, then tapped his nose when she looked surprised. “Jealousy smells quite strong. Her master has noticed you, while he probably cannot tell that child from hordes of other masked figures. She wants him to notice her. She is infatuated.”

               “Poor thing,” Ysmir said dryly. “Perhaps I should turn around and talk some sense into her.”

               “That,” Inigo said firmly, “would be a very bad idea. Teenage girls shriek quite loudly, and I think she would pull your hair.”

               “Best not, then,” Ysmir agreed, suppressing a smile. “Your ears have been through enough today.”

.

* * *

 

.

               “Mother is going to paddle your backside,” Lucia said in awe, gazing admiringly at the studs peaking from Runa’s earlobes. Darva nodded emphatically, eyes still riveted to the bright little bits of gold. They glinted in the candlelight of Pinewatch like Runa’s hair, which Darva had always thought was especially pretty; long and straight and silky, completely unlike the heavy coils that covered her head.

                “They suit you quite well,” Beth said, crossing her arms to admire her handiwork. Her red-orange eyes glittered a little, matching the dull gleam of the ruby necklace she wore. Darva hoped when she stopped being cute she would be pretty, like Runa and Beth. Otherwise it just wouldn’t be fair.

                “I think you should have waited until Auntie Ysmir got home before you did this,” Ma’Rakha said solemnly, looking from her to Aventus to Runa. He sat on his bed next to Sofie, who had felt the need to lay down when Beth plunged one of her best sewing needles through her sister’s ear. “She might be upset you did not ask for permission.”

                Runa shrugged, “They’re my ears,” she said stubbornly.

                “They’re her studs,” he replied, unimpressed with her rebellion.

                Beth shrugged. “Wear your hair down for a while,” she suggested to the older girl. “That way, by the time she notices them, the piercings will be set and it won’t matter if she takes the studs back.”

                “They were in one of her piles of miscellaneous gifts anyway,” Runa revealed, propping her chin on her hand. “People send her junk from all over Skyrim, to thank her for—what are you listening to?” she interrupted herself, watching Beth tilt her head to the side and frown in concentration.

                The girl straightened and smiled, lips pressed together. Sometimes Darva wondered if she were self-conscious about her teeth, for she never showed them when she smiled. “I think I hear Father’s hunting horn. I had best get back.”

                “I’ll walk you,” Aventus offered instantly, and Beth smiled again, her lashes coming down to hide her eyes as she stood.

                “I can find my own way,” she demurred, then was out the door before they could say anything more.

                “She’s fast,” Ma’Rakha noted admiringly.

“Yeah, she is,” Aventus agreed as he sank back down, looking quite put out.

They knew that from earlier, of course, and by now were used to the way the girl would take off at random moments. After all, Beth had been playing with them for the better part of a week, now. Darva liked her. She knew lots of fun things and didn’t mind teaching them, like a version of Blind Man’s Bluff where when you caught the person you had to guess who they were before they were really “it.” If you couldn’t, you had to let them go. Darva found she was really good at that game. Beth had also taught Darva and Sofie how to mash up some blue mountain flower and wheat into a goo to spread on cuts. She called it an “ointment,” and it healed the scrapes so much faster than just cleaning them did! Then there was the strange game she played with dice and a cup, where you guessed what numbers would come out, and if you guessed wrong, you had to give money to the person who guessed right. Beth was the best at that one.

                Aventus was still watching the door swing shut, then jumped when Erik caught it, entering with a grin on his face.

                “Your mother’s just up the road,” he told them. “Blaise and Alesan are already—” he was cut off as he evaded the rush of children shoving passed him “—gone.” He stared after them bemusedly, then paused as he realized one child was left. “Don’t you want to go see your mother, Darva?”

                The littlest child was still seated by the table full of needles and a particularly bright candle. She gazed downward, kicking her feet. “It’s dark,” she said, her face full of conflicted sadness, “I’m supposed to be in bed when it’s dark. I was a bad girl again.” She had also helped Runa find those studs so Beth could pierce her ears, but she wasn’t about to rat out her older sister.

                “It’s getting dark a bit earlier now, sweetie,” Erik said, going over to kneel in front of the child. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Your bedtime isn’t for another half an hour.”

                She didn’t look cheered. “What…Uncle Erik, why does Momma keep leaving?”

                “Uh…” he replied, since he didn’t actually know. “Because she’s a hero, and sometimes people need her help.”

                “They never needed her help this much before,” she pouted.

                “They did, but it was mostly before you were born,” he revealed. “You know the stories, don’t you? Everything your Momma has done?” When she just looked at him, miserable, he smiled reassuringly. “She defeated Alduin the World Eater, and saved the world. Then she helped stop vampires from raging all across Skyrim, and made a powerful Dragon Priest on Solstheim stop mind-controlling the people there. That doesn’t even mention the dragons she’s slain, or the bandits she’s stopped.”

                Darva looked up with wide eyes, “She used to _kill_ dragons? Why?”

                “Uh,” he rubbed the back of his neck, unsure exactly how to get himself out of this mud wallow he had gotten himself into. “Well…they were bad dragons. Like bandits are bad people, I guess.”

                “Oh,” she seemed satisfied with that answer, and he relaxed. “Does that mean she’s going to have to slay me too?”

                “What?” he yelped, completely taken aback.

                “Momma slays bad dragons, and bad people. I did bad things. I got Alesan hurt, and I said a bad word to Blaise that made him do what I wanted him to do. I’m a bad person,” she confessed, voice small and quiet so that Erik barely heard her.

                “No. No, Honey-bee, you’re a great person,” he assured her, putting both hands on her shoulders and giving her his best, most convincing smile. “You’re a sweet and charming little girl, and your mother loves you.”

                Darva sniffed, rubbing her nose on her sleeve. “Then why has she been going away? No one sent a courier asking for her help or anything.”

                “You think she’s been leaving because of you?” he asked, incredulous.

                She nodded, golden curls swinging.

                “Well, I’m sure that’s not the case, but why don’t you ask her yourself?” he suggested, holding out his arms. She nodded and hopped into them, wrapping her arms around his neck as he rose, carrying her out into the early night and towards the bundle of commotion that was her family.

                Darva thought her mother looked tired, but Ysmir’s face lit up just a bit when she saw her daughter, and the girl wiggled for Erik to let her down and ran to hug her. “Are you going to be going away again?” she whispered into Ysmir’s cloak, after the woman dropped to her knees to greet her.

                “Yes, Honey-bee, I am,” her mother replied, and the girl sagged for a moment before Ysmir tilted her chin up so that the girl was looking her in the eyes. “This time, though, you’re coming with me.”

.

* * *

 

.

                _“Drem yol lok._ Greetings, Dovahkiin, Kulaas,” Odahviing boomed, and Darva covered her ears for a moment before smiling at him.

                “Hello, Odahviing!” she said, running up and throwing her little arms around his nose. He held very still for this, and did not take a breath until she released him.

The Red Dragon looked up at the Dragonborn. “I see no _hokoron,_ no enemies, Dovahkiin. I suppose this means _hi krahl bod?”_

                Ysmir grinned. “If I could fly on my own, Odahviing, you know I would.”

                _“Do rahlo_. Who would not?” he replied in great humor. _“Fos los hin zen?_ Where is it that you wish to go?”

                “I need to take Darva to High Hrothgar,” she said, and he lifted his head a little in surprise, neck arched and eyes pinning, “but the path is very dangerous and…arduous for a child.” Well, it was arduous or an adult too, but she wasn’t about to mention that.

                “ _Do rahlo_. Of course, Dovahkiin. _Lost sadon gein praag do ek?_ Has she been called to _Monahven?”_ the _dovah_ asked anxiously.

                “No. Not formally, at any rate. They simply wish to meet her, and they told me Paarthurnax will be visiting at this time.”

                Odahviing actually chuckled. “Another to hear the Old One’s stories. _Rok fend kos unaz._ He will be thrilled.”

                Ysmir shifted a little uncertainly. “There is, ah, one thing, and I’m not sure if you’ll like it or not.” He tilted his head to the side, then closed his eyes in surprised pleasure when Darva started scratching around his brow ridge. Ysmir almost chuckled; he looked so contented like that. A great elder dragon, turned docile in a second by a tiny, five-year-old girl. “Well, I don’t want Darva to fall off…”

                His eyes opened again, quickly, then narrowed in suspicion. “You wish to use rope.” The last word was uttered much like a curse.

                “Not around your neck,” she said hastily, “just between two of your spikes so that she’s a little more secure.”

                Odahviing thought for a moment, happening to glance at Darva’s round, smiling face while thinking, then sighed gustily, sending Darva’s skirts whipping around her legs and setting Ysmir’s mage robes askew. _“Zu'u fen gelaad daar_. Just do not tell the other _dov.”_

.

* * *

 

.

                “Well?” Ysmir asked Arngeir anxiously, watching her daughter sleep peacefully, wrapped up in half a dozen blankets and the old _dovah_ that story-told her to sleep.

                The Greybeard sighed, “Honestly, Dragonborn, we know not what to make of her,” he confessed.

                She hid her sinking heart with a dry response. “Obviously.” From the moment they had landed, Honey-bee had been a whirlwind of activity in this normally peaceful place. She had bombarded the monks with questions they could not answer, until Borri finally told her _“Stiildus,”_ in a voice that shook the mountain. That had impressed her for perhaps five minutes before she was bouncing around once again.

                Finally, Paarthurnax had arrived, and Darva had sat still while the Greybeards tried to teach her Unrelenting Force. After about fifteen minutes of lecture about how to use the Shout, and that it was not a plaything, they had finally given her leave to speak by asking if she had any questions.

                “I already know that one,” she had said.

                Finally, after much debate on what Shout was safe for a five-year-old to know (after her display earlier, Whirlwind Sprint was out of the question), they had arrived on Disarm. Darva had looked at the word quietly before looking up at Einarth, who had imprinted it on the ground for her. “Does it always rip the arm off?” The old man had blinked, then glanced at Arngeir.

                “Disarm means only that the _thu’um_ will take the weapon from their hand,” the Greybeard assured her. “Gaze at the Word, and then Master Einarth will grant you his understanding of it.”

                Darva stared at the graven symbols with a little frown of concentration on her face for a long moment, then transferred her gaze to Einarth’s face. Arcs of light passed from the man to the girl and she nodded, not showing any of the disorientation Ysmir had the first time she had experienced getting such knowledge directly. She wondered if perhaps she had been giving Darva a bit of knowledge without meaning to. That would certainly explain how she already knew Unrelenting Force! “Thank you,” she said politely, and the man smiled, nodding back to her.

                “Dovahkiin,” Paarthurnax called, and they all turned to look at the old _dovah,_ “Give your weapon to one of the brothers. _Hin fen los norok._ You are too strong a warrior for her _thu’um_ to affect you.”

                Ysmir nodded and handed her Dragon Priest dagger to Wulfgar, who seemed to be the only one willing to touch it. He went and stood before Darva, holding the blade in a fighter’s stance. Ysmir lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t comment.

                Honey-bee looked uncertainly at the old man, then at Ysmir, who smiled encouragingly. “You won’t hurt him,” she assured the girl, who shrugged, then looked at Wulfgar.

                “You sure?” she asked him, and he nodded. “And you really won’t lose your arm?”

                “He will be fine,” Arngeir assured her, sounding as if he thought her hesitation was silly.

                _“Zun!”_ she Shouted, the Word exploding from her with surprising force for such a little girl. The dagger sailed from Wulfgar’s grasp and landed in the snow several lengths away. Wulfgar grinned and shook his hand as if it had gone numb. Darva gave a sigh of relief, then wrinkled her nose and rubbed her throat. Ysmir handed her a bottle of jazbay juice with some healing potion mixed in, which the girl drank thirstily.

                After that, the Greybeards, Paarthurnax included, had gone aside to discuss things while Ysmir and Darva distracted themselves by playing in the snow with Odahviing, who had been watching with interest. Playing in the snow with a dragon was a bit like trying to swim in high waves; you got knocked down a lot and had to flounder to the surface. Ysmir reclaimed her dagger, then told Darva a very abbreviated story about how she had gotten it, in the Nordic tomb of Volunruud, where she had had to fight some particularly nasty draugr and learned the first word of Aura Whisper.

                Paarthurnax had come over then, to greet his little _kulaas_ and tell her stories. Ysmir had gone inside and raided the chest with spare bedding, but she doubted the monks minded.

                “She could be Dovahkiin,” Arngeir said with a helpless shrug. “She can absorb knowledge directly from us, rather than meditating on the meaning of Words, but a few particularly talented Tongues could do so, as well. I’m afraid we won’t know for sure until she’s older, or if…” he trailed off, glancing at her sideways.

                “If she absorbs a dragon’s soul,” she finished with a sigh. “What a tangle.”

                “I suppose I do not need to warn you about the Blades finding out about this?” he said pointedly.

                “No, you don’t,” she replied honestly. Too late.

                “Then I advise you to simply give her time. The transfer of knowledge that taught her the _thu’um_ she used today can only be done by someone with a deep understanding of the Shout, so yourself or one of us. She cannot learn the way you did, by tapping the understanding directly from the souls she absorbed. If you chose not to teach her yet, she will have no way of learning new Shouts.”

                “I plan on teaching her a little,” Ysmir replied, a bit to his surprise. “There are a few Shouts I wouldn’t mind her knowing, to keep her safe, but there are definitely Shouts she’s better off not knowing.” Such as Bend Will for instance, but she was too late there, as well.

                Arngeir nodded thoughtfully, watching the child sleep. “You, the child, and the Red Dragon are welcome here tonight. It is late, and cold aloft.”

                “Thank you,” she replied, quite heartfelt. A child who could Shout was bad enough; a child that might sneeze a _thu’um_ was something else altogether.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Babette makes a bad decision. Ysmir probably does too.


	21. Unwelcome Guest

                Erik yawned into his hand, trying to be as silent as possible as he did so. The other mercenaries that he had served with delivering that silver shipment had taught him how to move quietly and carefully, to avoid any stray jangle of mail or clink of armor parts colliding against each other. Truth be told, though, he hadn’t gotten any good at it until one of the less patient ones “borrowed” his armor and brought it back with something called “muffle” on every piece. Erik didn’t know what he had been talking about; the armor hadn’t looked any different to him, save that now and then it glinted green in the darkness.

                He had first watch, as usual. He liked first watch, because it was easier for him than getting up after sleeping a few hours, only to go back to sleep again after, or waking very early in the morning. With a silent sigh, he rolled his neck to ease the tension, glancing up at the loft, where his borrowed bed was, with longing. It was sort of odd sleeping in the same room with Lydia, but not in the crass way his former colleagues would joke about. Lydia was a fierce warrior, and could wipe the floor with him whenever she felt like it. Erik knew and accepted this, just as she knew and accepted that he was trying to get better, and would help him out on his practices.

                Argis, on the other hand, was sort of a jerk about it.

                His gaze fell on the form curled up in sleeping furs just beyond the door. Erik could only see the big Nord’s feet peeking out, but he could tell from the amount of tension in the man that the Markarth housecarl was sleeping lightly. The warrior thought Erik unseasoned, and made this painfully clear to him. That was alright, Erik supposed, if they were on a mission together, but while guarding the household was important, this was hardly a war zone. He thought the older man could be a little nicer to him.

                Feeling his eyelids droop, Erik sat up, rolling the Staff of Ice Spikes Lydia had given him between his palms and legs, trying to keep himself occupied. It probably would have helped if he was outside keeping watch, rather than inside, which told all his instincts he was safe. A heady, meaty scent wafted from the stewpot Sofie had placed on the hearth, which didn’t help any.

                Rubbing his eyes, Erik wondered how long he had until midnight came, and Argis took over.

                Something moved.

                Erik froze, moving only his eyes, then, very slowly, his head, to see what had caught his attention. Two dull spots of red moved in from the front door, through the entrance hall, and finally stopped at the door to the dining room. Erik let his eyelids close most of the way, so that he could just barely see the incandescent spots through his pale lashes. He knew what this was; Lydia had described it to him in detail. This was a vampire. The glowing spots were its eyes, so its torso should be about a head length below that…

                Apparently deciding he was asleep and all was safe, the vampire crept into the room, toward him. He almost panicked, but then the eyes glanced away as one of the children coughed, and Erik took his chance.

                There was a muffled “oomph!” as the ice spike struck the creature, by sheerest luck pinning it to the post at the bottom of the stairs. Erik leapt to his feet, thrusting a torch into the banked embers of the fire until it caught, keeping one eye on the glowing form of the ice spike and the bobbing eyes.

                Hand shaking, he lifted the torch to see the beast, and felt a little sick.

                “Miss me?” the little assassin sassed acidly, tugging at the spike that impaled her shoulder. She must have been in dreadful pain, but she kept at it doggedly.

                “Argis!” Erik hissed loudly, and had the relief of hearing the man grunt and roll out of his bedroll and to his feet, padding over quickly. For the moment, he was grateful that the man slept lightly, although he really didn’t know how you could get in the habit of any other kind of sleep when you spent most of your nights in a stone bed.

                “Erik, you idiot, what do you think you’re doing?” the older man asked, aghast at the sight of a child pinned to the woodwork.

                “Catching a vampire,” he whispered back harshly. “She’s a member of the Dark Brotherhood; Ysmir and I met her coming back to the house.”

                “And you didn’t kill it?” Argis asked, sounding as if he were asking the Divines for patience.

                “She looks like a kid!” Erik the Slayer practically yelped.

                A slight creaking made them both turn to spot Sofie, coming out of the girl’s room rubbing her eyes, then freezing, blinking wide-eyed at the scene before her, glancing back in the room as if she thought she might be dreaming. Finally, she focused on the vampire, “Beth?” she asked in a small voice.

                “No, not Beth,” Erik thought fiercely as the vampire scowled at him, then snapped his fingers, “Babette! That was her name.”

                “Why is Beth pinned to the wall?” Sofie asked, alarmed as she began to realize this was not a bizarre dream.

                “She’s not Beth,” Argis said shortly. “Go wake up Lydia,” he ordered sternly, and she ran to do just that as the Bulwark lifted the sword he had carried in and placed it against the small assassin’s throat. “What are you doing here, vampire?”

                “I’m just a lost child, looking for some milk,” she lied cheekily, her eyes getting big and helpless. “Won’t you help me?” Argis regarded her for a moment, then slapped her face with the flat of his blade. She yelped and glared at him, “I’m going to rip your throat out for that,” she snarled.

                “Try,” the man challenged. Erik just shook his head, holding the staff at the ready in case he needed to make another spike.

                “What is going on here?” Lydia hissed angrily as she came down the stairs, her hair askew and her sleeping tunic rumpled. She halted at the sight of the girl. “Oh, a vampire,” she said, quite as if this were an everyday occurrence. Sofie’s gaze bounced between Lydia and the vampire as the woman went to the chest in the front room and returned with some rope. Walking up to Erik, she held out a hand. “May I borrow that a moment?” she asked.

                “Sure,” he replied, surprised, as he handed it over to her. Sofie clapped both hands over her mouth as Lydia struck the vampire child in the head with the staff, knocking her out, then serenely walked over and yanked the spike from the wall. Erik shifted uncomfortably as she began tying the slender arms behind the vampire’s back. “You seem awfully undisturbed by this,” he commented. For once, Argis seemed to agree with him.

                “Ysmir is not the only member of the Dawnguard in this house,” she replied with a snort, tying the knots securely, then lifting the vampire into her arms. “I’ve seen vampires that look younger than this. Ysmir could never bear to do away with them; either I had to kill them or help her drag them, kicking and screaming, to Falion for a cure.” She hitched the child up on her shoulder a bit more securely, then headed up the stairs, through her room and back into the second story of the back section, where the door to Ysmir’s old Alchemy lab was locked up tight. “Here,” she said, handing the vampire to Erik, who held her gingerly.

                “What are you planning to do with her?” Argis asked, eyeing all of them like he thought they were insane.

                Lydia was rummaging around on the top sill of the door, from which she pulled down a key and unlocked it. A strange, sulfurous smell assaulted all of them, but the housecarl just pulled her shirt up over her mouth and dragged a chair inside the empty, circular room, placing it in the very center. Looking at Erik, she pointed at it, and he held his breath and deposited the vampire child on it, immediately after which Lydia began lashing her to it with thick, sturdy rope.

                “Why are we keeping it?” Argis asked, aggravated as they tested the ropes for security.

                “Do you want to explain to Ysmir that we killed her rather than cured her?” the other housecarl asked, giving him a bland look. She stood, finally satisfied, and walked out of the old lab, locking it behind her and shoving the key down the front of her shirt, making Erik blush.

                “We should just kill it!” he retorted, exasperated. “We don’t have to mention how it looked!”

                “No!” Sofie cried, darting between them to place herself in front of the door and holding her arms out wide, as if to shield it. The adults gazed down at her with surprised. “You can’t hurt Beth!”

                Erik glanced at the other two, who seemed too surprised by this level of vehemence from normally gentle, meek Sofie to even try to formulate a response. “Her name is not Beth,” he told her. “She lied to you. Her name is Babette, and she’s a member of…” he bit his lip, “a very bad group of people.”

                Sofie shook her head so hard her hair flew around like wisps of down. “No. She’s our friend, and you can’t hurt her!”

                Lydia sighed. “How do you know her, Sofie?”

                “She’s our friend!” the girl repeated.

                “I am too cranky for this,” Lydia muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Look, Sofie, it’s late. No one will touch Beth, or Babette, or whoever she is. We’ll figure out what to do with her in the morning, when your mother gets home.”

                “Do you promise?” she persisted stubbornly, and the housecarl looked irritated.

                “Yes, I promise,” she replied. Sofie transferred her gaze to Erik, making him feel like she had caught him kicking a puppy.

                “I won’t go in there,” he promised, “Cross my heart.”

                “I’ll wait for Ysmir,” Argis conceded grudgingly.

                “Good,” the girl finally relaxed, then asked, shyly, “Can I have a glass of water, please?”

.

* * *

 

.

                When Ysmir walked in with Darva the next morning to find everyone sitting glumly around the breakfast table, she tried to not respond with alarm. “Look at all these long faces!” she exclaimed, eyebrows shooting up. “Who died?” When everyone simply looked at her wretchedly, her eyes widened. “Oh, Talos. Who died?”

                Erik cleared his throat. “Um…that vampire we met? She…made friends with all your children.”

                “She _what?”_ Ysmir exclaimed, nearly shrieking.

                “She’s not going to hurt us,” Aventus said fiercely, glaring around the table.

                “Then why didn’t she give us her real name?” Runa replied, picking at her eggs glumly. No one looked like they had taken more than a bite or two at most.

                The Dragonborn goggled, “Babette’s here?” she asked, disbelieving. “Where?”

                “She’s tied up in the old Alchemy lab,” Lydia told her. Of everyone, she looked the most normal, and it seemed she had only not eaten yet for lack of a chance. “I knocked her over the head last night, and it appears she’s still out. Argis and I made sure there was nothing on her that could be used to cut the ropes, but we added some shackles to her feet, just in case.”

                “Mother,” Aventus said, standing and rushing over to her, “She’s not going to hurt us, please let her go.”

                Ysmir felt a sinking feeling deep in her gut. “Please tell me this is not the girl you’ve been sneaking off to see.” At his flushed and guilty look, she sighed, imagining Sheogorath laughing in the background to this farce. “Honey-bee, go get yourself some breakfast.”

                Darva looked a bit surprised. “I already had breakfast,” she reminded her mother.

                “Then have second breakfast,” Ysmir ordered, passing by the table altogether. All this tension was doing nothing for her digestion.

                Reaching the Alchemy lab, she paused, noting Erik had followed her up. “What?” she asked, a bit more waspishly than she had intended.

                “A courier arrived this morning, too,” he said diffidently. “He left this.”

                The Dragonborn took the note and unfolded it quickly. “It’s from the twins,” she said in relief. Not that she minded getting calls for help, but her time was a bit short right now. “It says they’re a day behind the courier. Oh, and they’re bringing Aela.”

                Erik shifted uncertainly. “While I really would like to meet some Companions, you’re pretty full-up here as it is, and with two more warriors, you really don’t need my help all that much,” he pointed out.

                She looked up in surprise, then smiled with understanding. “You miss your father, don’t you?”

                He flushed. “I was away for months, and was only back for a few days…”

                Smiling, she shook her head. “It’s alright, Erik. You’re right, on both counts, as much as I enjoy your company.” Turning back toward the door, she steeled herself, then pushed her house key in the lock. It turned with a clank of tumblers, and she hastily pulled out a handkerchief to cover her mouth and nose with. “Well, if the knock to the head didn’t keep her unconscious, the smell will,” she muttered, entering.

                The girl was just as she remembered, save that she sat slack in a chair, held up only by an impressive array of knots. Ysmir checked her hands first, making sure the girl hadn’t actually been awake and trying to escape. Just to be on the safe side, she retrieved two canvas rags and bound the vampire’s hands into fists to keep her from using her nails.

                Then she went and opened the windows.

                Babette hissed as the sun hit her skin, but the brisk breeze quickly cleared a good deal of the stench from the room, and Ysmir sighed in relief. “Well, I suppose you’re awake now,” the Dragonborn said with forced cheerfulness.

                “I…where…ah, hag’s tits,” the little vampire swore, gazing around groggily as she came to.

                Ysmir waggled a finger in front of her face reprovingly, “No dirty language out of you, young lady, or you’ll get your mouth washed out with soap, same as the other children.”

                Babette rolled her eyes. Ysmir had seen that eye roll before; Runa had started doing it. She’d wondered where the girl had picked it up, or if it was just something that developed on its own during puberty. “I’m a little old to be treated like that,” the vampire informed her scathingly.

                “Perhaps, but I’m in the habit,” Ysmir replied with a smile that was more a baring of teeth than anything friendly. “I bet your head’s hurting you.”

                The girl scowled, “That usually happens when someone hits you in the skull with a staff.”

                Rather than replying, Ysmir held a hand up near the vampire’s head. Babette cringed away from her for a moment, then graced her with an astonished “You’re _healing_ me?” Briefly, Ysmir wondered if the girl was more surprised that Ysmir was bothering, or that she knew how to heal undead.

                “No one wants a cranky, concussed vampire in the house,” the Dragonborn told her facetiously. “So,” the woman wondered aloud, standing straight and putting her hands on her hips, “What am I going to do with you?”

                “Killing me seems to be the most sensible option,” Babette replied caustically, then grinned, “but you won’t do that, will you?”

                “Of course not,” Ysmir scoffed. If she really believed that, she wasn’t about to disillusion her just yet. “I said that I’m not in the habit of killing children, and I meant it.” She paused, as if considering, “But Lydia might.”

                The smug look melted from the vampire’s face, which was beginning to look distinctly red where the sun hit it. “You know you want me alive,” she told Ysmir in a low voice, not sounding like a child at all. “I can see the distaste in your eyes at the thought of killing me, or allowing me to be killed.”

                “I’ve done things I’ve found distasteful before,” Ysmir said flatly. “It has never stopped me.”

                “So what _will_ you do now?” Babette asked, honestly wanting to know.

                “Keep you alive. For the moment, that’s all,” the Dragonborn replied, closing the windows and exiting the room. She would need some help with that, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Aventus is a teenager and Ysmir needs a new babysitter who knows more about vampires.


	22. Uncomfortable Truths

 

 

                “You can’t keep her in there!”

                “Aventus, I’m not talking about this anymore,” Ysmir replied wearily, packing yet another bag, although she intended to not be gone even as long as she had before. Of course, the very act of her making plans seemed to invite trouble, so she wasn’t taking any chances.

                “She’s my friend! I don’t care if she’s a vampire!” he cried passionately.

                Ysmir took a deep breath, not letting her emotions get the better of her. Finally, she sighed, and sat on her bed. “Aventus, did she ever tell you what she was doing here?”

                “Her parents are hunters, just like Uncle Inigo thought,” he replied stubbornly.

                “And who said that first, her or you?” she countered. “Do you want to know how _I_ know her, Aventus?” That shut him up for a moment as he looked stricken, as if the question hadn’t yet occurred to him. “I’ve never told you, because I want you to make your own choices, but…just as you called on the Dark Brotherhood to eliminate Grelod the Kind, someone performed the Black Sacrament who wanted _me_ dead. Babette is one of the assassins they sent to fulfil that contract.”

                Aventus more fell on the bed than sat on it. “She’s a member of the Dark Brotherhood?” he asked, his voice very small.

                “Yes. I…I know you’ve never given up the idea of being an assassin,” she told him, cringing a little, “and honestly, I was hoping you would give up the idea and decide you wanted to become a Companion or something, but I’m hardly one to disparage you if you make that choice. I just…just know that whatever happened between you after she got here, her original reason for coming was to kill me.”

                The boy’s hands clenched into fists, and he stared at them for a while, obviously thinking through some things. Ysmir fought the urge to sooth his hair back from his face. It had gotten so long since she had first brought him home. It curled in soft dark waves around his face, and suited him much better than the harsh crop he had sported before. Unfortunately, it also hid his expression from her gaze.

                Finally, he spoke. “What are you going to do?”

                “Well, I’m not going to kill her,” she assured him, and he relaxed visibly, “but I can’t let her go at this point, either. I need some help from someone who…knows vampires better than I. The Papas will be back later today or tomorrow, so Uncle Erik and I will be heading out. Until then, no one goes in, no one comes out.”

                “She’ll get hungry,” he murmured.

                “She’ll live until I get back,” she said shortly, then stood, hefting her knapsack onto her back, before leaning down to kiss the top of his head. “If you want, go sleep at Uncle Inigo’s house. It might make it easier.”

                He shook his head. “No. If someone doesn’t keep an eye on them, Blaise and Alesan are likely to shove crickets under the door, or something else obnoxious. I’ll stay.”

                “Thank you,” was all she said, dropping down in front of him to give him a hug. After a moment, he returned it. “And I’m sorry things have turned out this way.”

                “It’s not your fault,” he replied. “Come home soon, and safe.”

.

* * *

 .

                Odahviing was, much to her surprise, still near. He waded in the waters behind her home, basking in the sun and ignoring her other two boys, who seemed to have returned to their normal, rowdy selves. He glanced up as she walked down to the lake and sighed with resignation. _“Il zey tek_ ; you need another ride. _Zu'u vust kos rahgron,_ I am not a beast of burden, Dovahkiin.”

                Ysmir winced. “I know. I just have a vampire tied up in my Alchemy lab and I need some help handling her.”

                Odahviing lifted his head and tail a bit, interested, _“Tol los ni med hi._ I would have thought you would simply slay a _sosnaak.”_

                The Dragonborn gave her sons a sharp look and they beat a hasty retreat. “Well, she was bitten as a child,” she replied, looking away from his searching gaze, “and…my eldest son is infatuated with her.”

                _“Tol los dironzaar,”_ he said thoughtfully. “You have almost as many reasons to keep her alive as to kill her. _Ahrk vorey?_ Is she friends with the other _mal gein_ as well?”

                “Yes,” Ysmir moaned, wondering why the Divines delighted in giving her such trials.

                Odahviing suddenly seemed irritated, gaze somewhere above her. _“Til los zuk._ You wish me to ferry the man as well,” he stated.

                “Erik can take a horse home, if you’re opposed,” she offered. They seemed to have an extra one around anyway; one with saber cat teeth to boot. Blaise had taken to calling it “Pelagius.”

                _“Zu'u dreh lost truk wah dreh._ I cannot always act as…as _cart driver_ to you, Dovahkiin,” he persisted, looking back down at the fish that circled lazily between his legs, and Ysmir began to suspect there was something he was fishing for, and not in the lake.

                “I would owe you a favor, for sure,” she said carefully as he plucked a slaughterfish that was trying to bite him and irritably tossed it to the other side of the lake. He was not particularly fond of the taste of slaughterfish.

                “Then I have a task for you. Only if you agree, shall I.”

                “Let’s hear it,” she said unenthusiastically.

                “I need to speak to Miraak.”

                If Odahviing had turned into a Thalmor and demanded she give him cooking lessons, she could not have been more surprised. “Wh-why?” she stammered, flummoxed.

                _“Zu'u lost praag._ My business is my own, Dovahkiin,” he said, glancing up into the sky. “It is… _dii siifur kusah._ Personal.”

                “I…I understand. I cannot guarantee that he will speak with you, though. And if he does, that he will not try to kill you,” she warned.

                “He will not. Though a traitor to our reign, he is _dov;_ he will respect the wishes of the mother of his offspring.”

                Ysmir gaped, “H-how did you…”

                She swore the red dragon snickered, “It was not hard to infer, Dovahkiin, and your reaction was all the confirmation I could wish,” he added smugly. Ysmir briefly considered walking.

                “I’m here!” Erik called, skidding down the hill behind them. Ysmir turned quickly, afraid he had overheard the dragon’s low-voiced comment, but he did not appear to have. He seemed more interested in picking pine needles out of his rear than anything they might have been saying. “Hello, Odahviing!” he called cheerfully, still brushing off his butt.

                “You again,” the dragon said resignedly, recognizing the young warrior who had ridden him once before. Since Erik had swallowed a bug as they went aloft and spent most of the ride choking on it, the dragon was not eager to have him as a return passenger.

                At least he hadn’t gotten sick on him, as Lydia had.

                Heaving a colossal sigh, Odahviing made his ponderous way out of the lake, spreading his wings to dry in the sun as Ysmir glanced around the surrounding bluffs, searching for the telltale sign of watchers. For once, there didn’t seem to be any.

                “Now, let us be aloft. _Daar los ni prudaav._ The sooner this is over with, the better.”

.

* * *

 .

                _“Daar staad los rinik wuth._ This place is very old, and it reeks of death. Are you certain this is where you wish to be, Dovahkiin?” Odahviing asked, gazing up at Castle Volkihar.

                “Positive,” she replied, adjusting her knapsack in case she needed to fight. She had the Ghostblade with her, since it seemed to have a bit of psychological effect on vampires, and wore the pendant that kept her from catching diseases, just in case.

                Odahviing glanced at her expression, then back up at the castle. “I’ll knock,” he decided, much to her surprise. She watched him make his way up the ramp to the castle for a few seconds before she hurried after him.

                _“Drem yol lok._ Greetings, little mortal. Open this gate or I shall assist you,” he said simply.

                “I…oh,” the poor Watchman said, gazing up into Odahviing’s teeth.

                “Hello,” Ysmir called, bringing his attention down to her. It took him a moment, but by his start of surprise he seemed to recognize her. “Is Serana around?”

                The Watchman glanced up at Odahviing again. “The Lady Serana has much business to attend to,” he replied. “Is this a social visit, or an attack?”

                “A favor, I’m afraid,” she replied with an apologetic smile, good guard to Odahviing’s bad.

                _“Hi kuz rem lingrah!_ Do I need to take down the door, mortal?” Odahviing snarled.

                The Watchman seemed to regain some spine. “I will not tolerate threats to the Clan. Desist, or I shall set the gargoyles on you!”

                Odahviing looked thoughtful. _“Mmm, kusah._ I have not faced gargoyles in many years. They are quite…crunchy.”

                The Dragonborn snickered, then gave the old man as polite a look as she could, “My friend is just protective. Do you want to ask Serana if she’ll see me?”

                “Well,” he temporized, looking at her askance, “if I remember correctly, you two were quite friendly. I suppose I can let _you_ in.”

                The gate opened just high enough for Ysmir to duck under it before slamming shut. “Dovahkiin,” the dragon called before she entered the inner door, “If you are not back in an hour, I make my own way in.”

                “I shouldn’t take that long,” she assured him with a smile, heading inside Volkihar Keep. “Well, this place certainly looks better than last time I was here,” she commented, glancing around the entrance chamber. The gargoyles were missing; potted deathbells stood in their place. New banners hung on the walls, depicting two sickle moons over a highly stylized nightshade. She wondered whose idea that was, but would guess Valerica. A female vampire stopped in her tracks and gazed at her in suspicion. Ysmir smiled again. “Yes, I’m mortal. I’m looking for Serana.”

                “Trying to fix that, are you?” the vampire asked, turning and heading into the dining room. Ysmir followed, noting with surprise that no bodies were present on the long wood tables, which had been scrubbed clean of blood. The goblets were still obviously filled with it, as were the mead casks set along the table, but the place was no longer the gruesome charnel house it had been under Harkon’s rule. Even the tiled marble floor gleamed deepest black and purest white. Not for the first time, she wondered who had lived here before the Volkihar Clan claimed it as their own.

                “Ysmir!”

                The Dragonborn looked up and nearly gaped. Serana gazed down from the opposite balcony, happier than the woman could ever remember seeing her. Rather than the armor Ysmir had gotten accustomed to her wearing, she wore a burgundy gown that accentuated the curving lines of her figure. Her hair, which Ysmir supposed would never grow again, was braided with strings of crimson garnets, each shaped like a perfect little drop of blood. A circlet of gold set with a large, stunning ruby and a pair of moonstones graced her brow.

                The Daughter of Coldharbour raced down the steps to throw her arms around Ysmir, “It’s so good to see you!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Flashback!


	23. What Lies in Dimhallow

_Seven years previous…_

        “Why am I here?” Marcurio asked again, gazing down at the charred Death Hound at his feet. He kicked at it a little, then edged away nervously when it twitched.

        Ysmir barely glanced at him. “You’re here because Lydia had to go see Falion, and because Inigo had a prison social—which is interesting, seeing as I didn’t even know prisons _had_ socials.”

        The self-proclaimed master of magic winced. “Ouch. Passed over for a stuffed shirt and a cat.”

        “You are also here,” she continued, pulling the chain to open a portcullis that had the bad taste to be in their path, “because I paid you to be, and because you hoped we’d meet a dragon.”

        A wide grin split the mage’s face and he groaned, not unhappily “I never cheer to see the beasts save when you’re by my side.”

        “R-ight,” Ysmir drawled, smiling just a bit. The mage’s arrogance was occasionally insufferable, but she still couldn’t help liking him. Or perhaps that was because of some of the things he did when…she shook her head, consciously pushing the thought away.

        They emerged into another chamber, this one quite flooded, with a waterfall that dumped right on the site of several grave markers—which was pretty poor planning on the architect’s part, as far as Ysmir was concerned. Marcurio scowled. “Oh, great; grave water. Nice and stale and full of diseases.”

        “It’s running water,” the Dragonborn corrected him absently, “so it wouldn’t be stale. And I gave you that amulet of disease immunity.”

        “Doesn’t matter,” he countered morosely as several skeletons rose from the pool, “it has something worse.”

        Ysmir sighed and summoned her Flame Cloak. Marcurio jumped back, eyeing her warily, then in disbelief when she simply charged in and battered their opponents to re-death with the silver sword she had brought. The action caught the attention of a vampire further in, and he finally came back to himself and zapped the bloodsucker with chain lightning.

        “See?” she asked with a grin, pushing her hair back from her face. “No problem.”

        He looked at her doubtfully, “You do remember that we’re mages, right? We can blow the things up from a distance instead of jumping in and getting sliced to ribbons for our efforts.”

        She shrugged, “How am I supposed to work on my Restoration if I never put myself in danger?”

        Marcurio scowled, moving passed her. “Go tease a mudcrab.”

        He was silent for a long while after that, partly because they were focused on moving quietly, partly because he was a bit miffed at her, she thought. Finally, they passed through two stone ledges with gargoyles atop them. Watching them warily as they passed, they emerged into not another cave or crypt, but a stone room, with a scroll standing in state on a pedestal and a pair of stone gargoyles by the opposite door. The mercenary mage opened his mouth to say something, looking about in appreciation, but Ysmir put a finger to her lips.

        “I'll never tell you anything, vampire,” someone was saying. “My oath to Stendarr is stronger than any suffering you can inflict on me.”

        A smooth, masculine voice replied urbanely, “I believe you, Vigilant. I don't even think you know what you found here.” His tone had changed, becoming lightly mocking, almost indulgent, “So go and meet your beloved Stendarr.” Ysmir exchanged a quick look with her companion and began to creep forward once more.

        “Are you sure that was wise, Lokil?” a woman’s voice this time, lightly laden with worry. “He still might have told us something. We haven't gotten anywhere ourselves with—”

        “He knew nothing!”  Lokil interrupted harshly. “He served his purpose by leading us to this place. Now it is up to us to bring Harkon his prize, and we will not return without it.” Ysmir shivered a bit as the honeyed voice took on an edge of steel, “Vingalmo and Orthjolf will make way for me after this.”

        “Yes, of course Lokil, but do not forget who brought you news of the Vigilants' discovery.”

        “I never forget who my friends are,” he replied, almost off-handedly, “Or my enemies.” Well, that last part certainly wasn’t off-hand.

        They had edged around the room until they reached the door, moving through it silently. Two vampires stood over the body of a man, clothed only in ragged pants. “What do you think we should do?” Marcurio asked, frowning.

        “Eh,” Ysmir shrugged, stood, and tossed a pair of Dremora Lords down amongst them.

        “You will bleed!” yelled one.

        “A challenger is near!” cried the other.

        By the time the mages had reached the bottom of the stairs, both vampires were dead. “I know,” the Dragonborn told the Dremora affectionately, patting one on the bicep, “there could be no other end.”

        The Dremora actually smiled down at her, and Marcurio openly stared for a moment until the daedra frowned again, gazing back. “I smell weakness,” he stated.

        The mage scowled, “I smell your ass about to be kicked,” he replied.

        “Play nice, boys,” Ysmir interrupted absently, crossing the bridge to the circle of arches and looking at it curiously. The platform was large enough to hold a dragon comfortably, had it been empty. The outer reaches were surrounded by a railing to keep people from tumbling over, and the theme of rings continued inward toward the center. A wall of archways topped with free-standing arches marked out the first third, while another ring of free-standing arches marked the boundary between second and third part. “Circles within circles,” she muttered, rotating completely to see everything. “Like ripples in a pond.” A brazier filled with something that glowed blue-purple stood in a track near her, and she pushed it experimentally. It didn’t budge, so she moved on.

        “What do you think this does?” her companion asked, looking around.

        The Dremora Lords stood just outside the area, looking rather unimpressed. “Perhaps it summons a dragon?” the left one said hopefully.

        Marcurio whirled to stare at it, then gave Ysmir a look of complete incredulity tinged with dismay. She rolled her eyes at the direction his thoughts had instantly gone, walking to the center of the structure. “What do you suppose this does?” she asked, looking down at the button curiously.

        “I don’t know,” he replied, face creasing into a wary expression as he came nigh to gaze upon it. “Why don’t you press it and find out?”

        “Why don’t you, if you want to know so badly?” she countered, miffed.

        “After what happened in that Dwemer ruin, there is no way I’m pressing any more buttons,” he proclaimed emphatically, then paused, “Unless they happen to be yours.”

        Ysmir rolled her eyes and pressed the button.

        A spike shot up and through her hand, sending agony racing along her nerves, and she screamed in surprise, bending double as her blood flowed down the spike and into the button stand. It retreated as suddenly as it came, and she clutched her injured limb to her chest, unable to think for a moment until her friend raced forward and healed the wound.

        A purple aurora rose from the smallest circle of track, extending outward to one of the braziers. Glancing at each other with raised eyebrows, the mages moved to different parts of the circle, pushing and pulling the things into different positions. After a few seconds, the Dremora Lords even helped out, but they returned to Oblivion before the puzzle was solved. Marcurio paused for a moment, staring at where they had been. “They aren’t here for very long, are they?” he fished.

        Ysmir sighed. “They can stay longer, if you give them magicka and they’re really motivated.”

        He smirked, still looking a bit uneasy, “How motivated?”

        “I will make you press the button if you ask again,” she replied darkly. “Seriously; did you ever think that perhaps they just find dragons a challenge?”

        “Do they find you a challenge?” he countered with deceptive blandness.

        “Your face wouldn’t be improved with burn marks, Marcurio.”

        “This is true,” he replied, dropping it.

        Finally, all the braziers were lit. The center began to glow like a salt flame, incandescent white with blue and purple fire, as the floor sank. The mages cried out and scrambled backwards, eyes wide with alarm. The button proved to be the top of a monolith, and they approached it warily.

        “Well,” Ysmir finally said after they had circled it completely, “I suppose this is what they were looking for.”

         “But what is it?” Marcurio finished, reaching out and knocking on the thing to see if it was hollow. He backpedaled immediately as part of it sank into the ground, then halted, baffled. “Huh?” he asked as a woman was revealed. She instantly fell, having been apparently trapped in a standing position, only moving to catch herself when she was near the floor.

        Ysmir rubbed her eyes, wondering if the tomb air was affecting her; that could not be an Elder Scroll slung across the woman’s back.

        “Are you alright?” Marcurio asked, rushing forward to help the woman to her feet. Ysmir’s and Marcurio’s eyes widened until they were round as Septims; the woman was perhaps the most stunningly beautiful person they had ever seen. The Dragonborn flushed and suppressed a surge of jealousy.

        “Unh…where is…who sent you here?” she asked, glancing from one to the other.

        “Who were you expecting?” Ysmir asked, not very graciously.

        “I was expecting someone…” she hesitated, seeming unsure, “like me, at least.”

        The man blinked, looking up from the plunging front of the mysterious woman’s armor. A stupid feature in Ysmir’s opinion; that’s the first place she’d aim. The woman was so out of sorts she didn’t even appear to notice Marcurio’s wandering eyes. “What do you mean, ‘like you’?” he asked suspiciously.

        “She’s a vampire, you idiot,” Ysmir informed him acerbically, crossing her arms and looking away. She shuddered as her gaze fell on the monolith and chose another direction to glare at. She wasn’t even sure a vampire deserved that.

        “Oh,” Marcurio didn’t look nearly as bothered by this as he should be. He glanced at the monolith. “Why were you in there?”

        “That’s…complicated. And I’m not totally sure if I can trust you,” she replied.

        Ysmir crossed her arms. “Consider the sentiment returned.”

        “Now, now, Ysmir; be polite,” her friend admonished. The Dragonborn gritted her teeth. “Well,” he said pleasantly to the vampire, “We let you out, so haven’t we earned a story?”

        The vampire actually smiled a little as the egotistical mage used his not inconsiderable charm on her. “If you really want to know,” she replied, “help me get back to my family’s home.”

        “Uh, hello?” Ysmir interrupted, “I’m part of the Dawnguard, remember? They would want me to kill you, not send you back to your den of bloodsuckers,” she told the woman, but she could already tell she would have to go through Marcurio to do that. He looked shocked at the very suggestion.

        “Not fond of vampires, are they?” the woman surmised, gently tugging her hand out of Marcurio’s, who hadn’t released it when he helped her up, but rather held it near his chest and started stroking her palm with his thumb. She turned to face Ysmir fully, putting her hands on her hips. “Well, look; kill me, you’ve killed one vampire. But if people are after me, then there’s something bigger going on. I can help you find out what that is.”

        “Didn’t you say this Isran thinks the vampires have bigger plans?” Marcurio leapt to her defense with—of all things—logic. “What better way to find out what it is than to use a cooperative, courageous, gorgeous vampire?”

        “Who will probably drain us in our sleep and run off to wherever she needs to go anyway!” Ysmir cried.

        “I’m not even sure where I am,” the vampire countered. “But I do know this: you released me, so I owe you a debt. If you help me get home, that debt will be even greater. Helping you discover what you want to know is small repayment for what you have done for me.”

        The Dragonborn gazed steadily into those stunning, burnt-orange eyes, seeing no guile in them, and Ysmir knew guile when she saw it. There was actually an innocence about them she never would have expected, and a fierce determination that matched her own. Finally, she capitulated, throwing up her hands and saying “Fine. Where do you need to go?” as graciously as she could manage, which, given the circumstances, was not very.

        “My family used to live on an island to the west of Solitude,” she said with a small smile. Just a hint of fang peeked out from between her full lips. “I would guess they still do.”

        “An island, really?” Marcurio asked, impressed.

        “Calm down, idiot,” Ysmir advised. “It’s not like the bloody Summerset Isles; she’s talking about in the Sea of Ghosts. It’ll be colder than a Hagraven’s bed up there.”

        “Oh,” he visibly deflated, and the vampire laughed.

        “By the way,” she said, glancing from one to the other, “my name is Serana. Good to meet you.”

.

* * *

 .

        Ysmir grinned as the vampire released her. “You look beautiful!” the Dragonborn exclaimed, “Ruling suits you!”

        Serana laughed, waving off the compliment. “Ruling suits my mother; I merely advise.” Oblivious to the stares of the other vampires, she linked her arm through Ysmir’s, strolling with her toward the back of the castle. “What about you? What are you doing these days?”

        “Well, I could tell you, or you could decide to help me with my current predicament and see for yourself,” Ysmir suggested. Serana gave her a startled look, and Ysmir quickly brought her up to speed on Babette. “I don’t know how to keep a vampire alive without doing things I’d rather not. And I have no idea what to do with her. I can’t just keep her forever.”

        The vampire bit her lip thoughtfully. “You do not think she is a Telboth, do you?” she asked.

        Ysmir shuddered. “No. She’s of the Cyrodiil line, I believe,” she replied, glancing down. “So I do not want to be away too long. Blaise and Alesan have gotten into that room once…She has not fed in at least a day, and I do not want them to see her like that.”

        “It may disabuse them of the notion of her friendship,” she pointed out delicately.

        “I would rather not have them disillusioned in that manor,” Ysmir countered. “Now, I had best go tell Odahviing that I’ve not been eaten, before he widens your doorway.”

        “Odahviing is…?” she trailed off, inviting explanation. From her expression, she clearly expected Ysmir’s companion to be a lover.

        The Dragonborn grinned. “The irritated dragon that you will get to ride home with me, should you decide to come.”

        Serana’s orange eyes widened in delight. “You are making it very difficult to say no,” she pointed out with a laugh, and opened the door before them.

        It was Ysmir’s turn to look about in delight. “You’ve been industrious,” she said appreciatively, gazing around the repaired garden. The moondial gleamed in the little sunlight that filtered through the northern clouds. It was hardly ever sunny on this island, either through nature or device. Ysmir would guess device, since the nights tended to be clear enough.

        Serana’s smile was all sweet memories. “Yes. Mother has been busy ruling the clan, so I tried my hand at it. I…rather like it. It’s soothing.” The woman turned back to her friend, “You may invite this Od…odd…your dragon friend to relax on one of the towers back here, if he wishes. The east one is rebuilt inside, and I can lodge you up there tonight, if you wish.”

        "Sadly, I’m afraid I’ll need your answer as soon as possible. I cannot stay the night, not with all that is happening,” Ysmir said solemnly.

        Standing straight again, Serana looked at her with concern, “You have not told me everything.”

        “I did say I was in a hurry,” the mage said dryly.

        “Go to your dragon friend; I must speak with Mother,” the Daughter of Coldharbour said, gathering her skirts and heading inside. Ysmir took one last, lingering look at the garden before she followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: Ysmir introduces her vampire friend to her werewolf ones.


	24. Those Who Bear Watching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sucky Summary: Bringing Serana back to the house doesn't go over so well with certain residents. Meanwhile, Delphine is paranoid again. Of course, just because she's paranoid doesn't mean she's wrong.

                Vilkas scratched at the stubble on his chin, sitting in a chair a few feet from the door to the old Alchemy lab, which was locked with a newly-installed bar across it. Inside, he could hear the little vampire muttering to herself, though he couldn’t quite make out what she was saying. That was alright, since he really didn’t care. As long as he didn’t hear the movement of the chair, or the sound of ropes being snapped, he was content.

                When they had returned the night before, it had been to a strangely subdued homestead. Lydia had reassured them that Ysmir, though absent, was quite well, but the problem with the Dark Brotherhood had progressed in a way none had expected. Though he’d tried not to show it, Vilkas had been livid. He had hoped, despite the dangers of living in Skyrim—especially during a war—that the children might be able to grow in peace. After losing their parents once, they certainly deserved it. But now that peace had been shattered, and the one responsible was cooling her heals tied to a chair rather than filling a bowl in the Alchemy lab, where she belonged.

                “If you keep staring at it like that you’ll stare a hole in it, and we’ll have find somewhere else to put her,” Aela commented as she came up behind him.

                “I don’t understand why we’re even keeping her,” he muttered darkly, crossing his arms.

                “Don’t you?” she asked softly, eyes regretful.

                He sighed, thinking of Aventus’s anguished expression, the taunt and tense air around the rest of the children. They went about their chores preoccupied, and their play was half-hearted at best. “Aye. I know why we’re keeping her.”

                There was a long moment of silence as the Huntress settled herself cross-legged on the floor. Just that morning the wall had been piled high with crates, but had since been emptied, leaving nothing for the vampire girl to use as a weapon, or as cover, if she escaped. A few old beds had been reassembled and placed at the opposite end of the room, along with what few of the crates couldn’t be placed outside or in the unfinished basement room. It had been interesting carting things from the third story tower room and passed the vampire, but they had emptied the small room then readied it for the supposed vampire expert Ysmir was bringing back, putting not only a bed and dresser, but one of the old table-top alchemy labs. Unfortunately, the opening was too small to put a wardrobe; the bed had needed to be brought in in pieces.

“I think your brother has found his new best friend,” she commented, aiming for lightness. “He and Argis have been having the same arm-wrestling match for the last twenty minutes.”

                “Hm,” he said, glancing out the window.

                “Argis is a good fighter,” she continued.

                “Uh-huh,” he replied absently, squinting at a speck in the distance.

                “He rushes in more than I’d like, but Farkas does that, too,” she added.

                “Right.”

                “I think he’d be a good fit for the Companions,” the Huntress revealed.

                “Oh,” Vil said.

                “He makes love like a saber cat,” she informed him.

                “That’s ni—what?” he turned, frowning.

                “Oh, good; you were listening. Sort of,” Aela stretched, then walked to the window to peer out, trying to find what was so interesting. “Ah, a dragon. You know you won’t be able to tell if it’s Odahviing for at least a few more minutes,” she chastised, “so you could bother to hear me out.”

                “I was listening,” he protested. “I like Argis fine, but I don’t know him well enough yet to know if he would make a good Companion. Kodlak is the one who can see a person’s soul on first meeting, not me.”

                She softened, leaning against the sill and crossing her arms. “I know you look up to him, Vil, but he’s been asking your opinion on these matters for months; perhaps it’s a skill you had better learn.”

                He looked down; only Farkas was supposed to know what Kodlak had said to him, that the man wanted Vil to be the next Harbinger. “I wish Ysmir would bring the children to Whiterun more often,” was all he said.

                Aela rolled her eyes, “I know. I can see why she doesn’t, of course. And Divines help the poor town if she actually decided to live there. The poor guards would never know when a dragon was attacking, or visiting.”

                “Can you two keep it down out there?” the vampire yelled through the door, “I’m trying to plot my revenge in here!”

                “How would you like to plot it after having your fangs popped out?” the Huntress threatened acidly.

                “Go ahead and try; I could use a new fur for my bed!”

                Aela sighed, rubbing her head the way Ysmir was prone to. “I hope that’s Odahviing.”

                “It probably is,” Vil replied, standing and gazing out the window.

                “You go,” the Huntress told him, glancing at the door, “I’ll keep watch here.”

                He nodded his thanks, heading out of the storage room—well, what had been the storage room, yesterday—and downstairs. His brother and Argis were still sitting on opposite sides of the table, hands grasped overtop of it. Veins bugled in each man’s forehead and on their arms as they strained against the other’s grasp. Blaise and Alesan watched the arm-wrestling match raptly, eyes wide. Vil suppressed a smile. “A dragon is close,” he told them, distracting Argis for a moment and allowing Farkas to press the other man’s wrist to the table.

                Blaise was at his side so fast the boy might as well have been conjured there. “Is it Odahviing? Is Mother with him? Did she find that friend who’s an expert on vampires? Are we going to let Beth out?”

                “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, and no,” he replied with a snort, strapping on his sword and donning his gauntlets.

                “If it’s a bad dragon, can I fight it?” the boy asked, eyes bright with excitement.

                Vil regarded him expressionlessly for a moment, “No.”

                “Aw,” the boy whined, looking put-out.

                “Leave the pouting to the girls, Blaise,” Vil advised as he headed to the door. “They’re much better at it, and look a lot more attractive doing it.”

                The day was bright and clear, and Vil decided to spend the rest of it out-of-doors. If the weather held, he might even go for a run that night. He didn’t think Ysmir would want company with a vampire child in the other room. Lydia walked over from the stable, a little worried frown on her face as she spotted his weapons. “Dragon over the western range,” he told her, and she nodded, placing a hand over the pommel of her sword and retrieving her breastplate from the stable. Vil heartily approved of Lydia’s attitude; she was never far from her weapons. Farm work made wearing armor impractical, so they compromised by keeping it near at hand, and wearing clothing they could fight in. Vil wasn’t even sure either Lydia or Ysmir _owned_ a dress.

                The dragon flew over the house, sending their hair and a good amount of straw flying, then circled to land beyond the woodpile, on the sloping land between the house and the lake. Vilkas jogged down the incline, noting Odahviing moving ponderously into the shade of several trees with a frown. Ysmir slid from his back and waved off Sofie and Lucia, who were trying to welcome her, and helped another woman down from the dragon’s back. The newcomer was in a strange, foreign armor and dark cowl, and she staggered against the tree as if injured. Ysmir raised her hands, healing light arching from them to the visitor, and Vil surmised the flight had made the woman ill.

                “Welcome back, Ysmir,” he said, reaching them. Behind them, he heard Lydia approach, and Farkas and Argis beyond that.

                She gave him a small smile, then asked the stranger, “Better now?”

                “Yes,” the woman said with a sigh, “I rather like riding dragons, but from now on let’s confine ourselves to night flights, hm?” she added with good humor, standing straight. Vilkas tensed at the sight of the glowing orange eyes held in the beautiful, pale face. The woman took a few steps toward the dragon until she stood just within the shade of the trees. “Thank you, Odahviing. That was…remarkable just doesn’t cover it.”

                The red dragon bowed his head to her, looking pleased. _“Hi los valokein, Mon do Krah Hjier._ It was my pleasure.” Turning his massive head to Ysmir, he added _“Dahmaan un skunvar, Dovahkiin._ Call me, when you are ready to return the favor.”

                Ysmir wrinkled her nose. “How could I forget that?”

                “Indeed. _Vonok, Dovahkiin_. Until we meet again,” he said, then launched himself into the sky without a further word.

                The Dragonborn glanced around at all the upturned faces, “He has things to do,” she explained.

                “So, we have a vampire locked in the house and you bring another here?” Vil asked, his cold gaze on the visitor.

                She crossed her arms as Ysmir glowered at him. “You must be Vilkas; Ysmir said you would probably be the first to be churlish toward me.”              

                “Serana,” Lydia said, giving a curt nod. She did not seem uncomfortable with the vampire, quite the opposite, in fact. “It is good to see you again.”

                The vampire smiled, somehow not making her fangs more pronounced in doing so. “You too, Lydia. If you don’t mind, I would like to go inside; it’s rather bright out here.”

                Vil watched as the vampire walked side-by-side with his family toward the house, eyes narrowed. Farkas frowned, joining him. “You’ve heard the stories about her; she safe enough.”

                “Even so,” Vilkas decided, “she bears watching.”

                Farkas snorted, “Don’t we all?” Vilkas shot him an irritated glance and started up the slope to the house.

.

* * *

 

 

.

                “Esbern!”

                The Blade’s Scholar jumped as his door slammed open with the thunder of righteous fury—he always had thought his fellow Blade had a sense of the dramatic, and she proved so now. “Delphine, how wonderful to see you,” he said blandly, turning to greet the woman.

                She scowled back at him. “All right, Esbern, enough is enough. I know you’re up to something in here, and I want to know what it is.”

                He sighed and marked his place with a hawk feather, closing the book he had been reading. “I’m simply doing what I have been doing since we moved here, Delphine; researching the dragons and their return.”

                “You spoke to the Dragonborn!” the woman exclaimed, as if she had caught him dealing with Molag Bal. He had wondered how long it would take her to figure that out.

                “She wished to speak with me, yes,” he admitted. “I told her that as long as Paarthurnax lives, my vows as a Blade prevent further such contact between us.” He watched her pace for a few moments, surmising that something else was bothering the fiery woman. “If you insist on wearing grooves in the floor, I would prefer you do it elsewhere than my study.”

                “The Dragonborn killed one of the Blades sent to watch her,” Delphine said, concern in her voice.

                Esbern frowned. “That doesn’t sound like Ysmir,” he began, but she cut him off.

                “It was that fool Bjalf. Garrot said it didn’t look like there had been a fight, but…I don’t like this, Esbern. If she’s thrown in with the dragons completely…”

                “You know Ysmir has her own code,” he told her. “She wouldn’t kill a _dragon_ because she believed he’s redeemed himself; I can’t see her killing one of ours without ample reason. I certainly can’t see her doing it without giving him a chance to defend himself—she’s picked up that much from the Nords, at least. Are you certain it wasn’t one of her companions? She does have a habit of bringing in odd types, and some of them might take finding a spy in the hills amiss.”

                Delphine paused, obviously mulling over what he had just suggested. “It could be,” she admitted, sighing. “But I still don’t like it, Esbern,” she repeated.

                “Where the Dragonborn is concerned, there is very little you do like,” he reminded her, opening his book again.

                After a few minutes the sound of pacing stopped, and he almost forgot her presence until she asked, “What’s this?” in a tone that made his stomach clench a little.

                “Research,” he said, peeking out from behind the cover to see her going over his notes. He stood, alarmed. “Really, Delphine, you get to read my books before the others as it is. Do you really need to snoop into my research materials now, as well?”

                “These aren’t ancient events recorded here, Esbern. This looks like…” she paused, giving him an admonishing look, “this looks just like when the Blades were monitoring the Empire for new Dragonborn. You have it all here—cities, likely candidates, reports from guards…”

                The old man thought fast. “I heard rumors that after the Markarth Incident, Ulfric started a school to reestablish use of the Voice as a weapon of war. I am simply looking for what students might have fled from such a failed institution.” That was truth, although the source had been anything but reliable, so he had dismissed such a notion.

                The woman continued to gaze at him suspiciously, and he gave an explosive sigh. “Really, Delphine, what reason would I have to look for another Dragonborn?”

                “That’s exactly what I was wondering. If you had said you were merely tracking Ysmir’s whereabouts, I might have accepted it, but now… _are_ you looking for a new Dragonborn, Esbern?” she asked softly.

                “This is ridiculous,” Esbern huffed, doing a credible imitation of affront considering how rapidly his heart was beating. “You’ve lived too long hiding from the Thalmor, Delphine. For you to interrogate me in this manner, and in my own study, no less!”

                She softened, “Forgive me, old friend. It’s simply been a long day. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a dragon to go kill.” She walked passed her fellow Blade and closed the door quietly behind her, heading down the hall.

                “Ready to go Mount Anthor?” the girl she was currently training asked cheerfully.

                “No. Take Garrot; he needs to get his mind off Bjalf. I have somewhere else I need to be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: Take your reader to work day for our newest Daedric Prince. 
> 
>  
> 
> I'm sleep deprived and it shows.


	25. The Life of a Daedra

                Dorte stood on a rise over the village, watching things get accomplished with an expression of satisfaction on her face. Miraak observed her watching them for a few minutes, until the children just below them—the only people in earshot—ran off, lobbing ashy snow balls at each other. Only then did he walk up to gaze out over the village with her, still a tad behind the Nord woman. She had an impressive set of shoulders, and he thought she might be a craftswoman, judging from that and the careworn state of her skin. She stood on a little promontory, like a sabercat surveying her territory. The mental image elicited a quiet chuckle from him.

                “Which one is yours?” he asked as she gazed after the little ones.

                “I don’t have one of my own,” she replied. “My niece and I live over with the rest of the stonemasons, yonder,” she waved a hand.

                “Your niece…she is the one who wanted to come here?” he asked, making a mental note to discover which of the hundreds of masked figures claimed kinship with the woman.

                The woman snorted affirmatively. “Foolish girl. Lost her entire family to dragons before she came to me, so it’s really no surprise that she came here when she learned this Miraak could defeat them so easily. Like a dammed moth to a flame.”

                “She came for protection?” he asked. It had occurred to him that with the Dragon Crisis people would come for that reason, but this was the first time it had been confirmed. Most came for power, or for some unnamed reward. A few came out of simple fascination, and others came because they wanted a new start in what seemed to them to be something out of a tale; for the adventure. Now, of course, he was getting those who wished knowledge as well.

                “And now, with some dammed walls in place, she might get it,” the woman snorted, finally turning her head to see who she was talking to. She paled, staggering back a step, and Miraak actually had to reach out with a tendril of magic to push her forward and keep her from falling over the edge. “You…” she finally rasped out, eyes wide.

                “You look as if you didn’t really believe I existed,” he replied, chuckling darkly at her reaction.

                “I…” she stared for a moment, then straightened. “I was beginning to question,” she had the unmitigated gall to say, “I’ve been here for two years, yet this is the first I’ve seen you.”

                “I will share a secret with you, Dorte,” he said, putting his hands behind his back as he gazed out over the village, “Becoming a Daedric Prince takes some getting used to.” It had taken him so long to heal from the wounds Mora had given him that he hadn’t been entirely sure he would still _have_ followers when he first ventured to emerge from Apocrypha, four years ago. It had come as quite a welcome shock to learn that they had not abandoned him, though he liked to tell himself that it wasn’t all that surprising, given his displays of power before he had disappeared.

                She scoffed, “What is this; an admission of weakness?”

                He gazed at her coolly, unruffled, “Were I a weak man I would be dead. Were I a weaker man I would still be in Apocrypha, recovering. Even if I were simply a younger man, I would still be in Apocrypha. I still remain because I am Dragonborn, Dorte, and—as I believe you pointed out—I am older than the Empire. I have had a long time to grow in power and knowledge. You’d do well to remember that.”

                For a long moment, the middle-aged Nord just studied him, “How do you know my name?” she finally ventured.

                He didn’t bother to hide his chuckle. “You’re the one who has been harassing my Steward; you tell me.”

                “What? Did he pray that I would stop?” she asked archly.

                “Something along those lines,” he admitted. “What I am interested in is how you knew the exact amount of time the builders would need to complete the village, down to the last piece of thatch.”

                “I’m a Master Stonemason, my lord,” she said, stressing the last to be just a tad mocking, “just as my father before me, and his father before him. I helped draft this city, found the quarries where we mined rock, and dealt with what merchants would talk to us to get wood and straw. More than that, I talked to the others to find out exactly what we needed, and how much. They knew they could depend on my leadership, and that I would be here when they needed something.”

                Miraak tilted his head just a bit in response to the sullen anger that smoldered beneath her words. Blackness opened behind her, and she gasped in fright as tendrils shot out to encase her, a thick tentacle wrapping itself around her neck and choking off her air, lifting until her feet dangled just off the ground. The First Dragonborn watched her dispassionately for a few moments as she struggled, clawing and tugging at the slippery surface to no avail as her face turned red, then purple. “I find your audacity amusing, Dorte, but I will only tolerate so much disrespect. I’d caution you not to test the limits of my patience,” he advised her ominously, releasing the spell.

                The tendrils withdrew as abruptly as they had come, dropping the Nord to her knees before him. She gasped air into starved lungs for a moment, then glared up at him, a hint of fear behind her eyes that turned to surprise when she was pulled to her feet by unseen hands. Good; he wanted her wary, not frightened into uselessness. “You seem like the kind of woman who only believes what she sees, and therefore I am here. I want to be able to count you amongst the ranks of my followers, but for now having your attention will do.”

                “My attention for what?” she asked suspiciously, still rubbing at her neck. Realizing what she was doing, she grimaced and let her hands drop to her sides.

                “Turinmar is overworked,” he revealed. “He won’t admit it to me, but it’s fairly obvious. If his health isn’t to suffer, he needs an assistant.”

                “The great Miraak, worried about the health of a single follower?” Dorte asked incredulously. Her words were mocking, but Miraak could see the memories pouring into her mind as she examined them and finally saw the same signs of wear in his Steward that he had. Concern rose in her eyes, and guilt.

                “I concern myself with those that distinguish themselves,” he replied dismissively, and saw anger rise in her again. She was so volatile, this Nord, so easy to goad. She would prove most entertaining if she decided to stay. If not…well, perhaps he would seek out her niece and see if competency was a family trait. “Turinmar has served me faithfully for longer than you have been alive, by concerning himself with those who were unable or did not bother to bring attention to themselves. Now, he needs help to continue to give my followers the care they deserve. You seem quite concerned with them, and your skill has distinguished you. Therefore, I want you to present yourself to Turinmar tomorrow as his new assistant.”

                He spoke so confidently, as if he knew she would do so now that he had decreed it, and Dorte gritted her teeth at the assumption, looking away and about to retort, but the memories of the elf’s haggard face kept intruding. For a long while Dorte was silent, pondering this as guilt warred with pride for supremacy. “I wasn’t aware Daedra delegated,” she finally said, looking at him dubiously.

                “I was not always a Daedra,” Miraak countered. “I was once a man who ruled over a city very like this one, and I did it very well. I could run things by poking into people’s minds and hearts, if I wanted to, but I think that would be uncomfortable to my subjects, and tiresome for me.”

                “That’s…probably true,” she admitted, finding it hard to look at him directly after this revelation, wondering what he was gathering from her thoughts. Miraak smiled as she unwittingly went over every scathing, ill opinion she had of him and winced, glancing around for a second portal to open and swallow her up.

                “You don’t trust me, and you don’t like me,” he answered the unspoken question after a moment. “You think I find myself too high and mighty to deal with the everyday details of a city. In a way you are correct, but answer me this; do your jarls personally deal with every village feud or skinned knee? Why should you expect from me more than you expect from them, when I have more people and two realms to look after? This is no longer the extent of my followers, either, Dorte. There are men, mer, and beast folk all over Nirn seeking knowledge only I can grant them. Should I leave their summons unanswered while I personally see to every petty problem of this settlement?” he finished scornfully.

                Anger rose again to dominate her expression, but just this morning she had used many of the same words to admonish her apprentices. It was why he had chosen this argument. It was interesting, this method of rule by persuasion, and he could not say whether or not he liked it better than the iron fist wielded by the Dragon Priests. He could easily fall back into those ways of dominance, but in this day and age, when autonomy and freedom were so sought after people would rebel a at hint of tyranny, it would quickly loose him what foothold he had gained.

                The woman groaned, “I see your point,” she finally conceded, and Miraak smirked behind his mask as her reservations strained and collapsed under the weight of this new consideration. “I’ll talk to Turinmar, but,” she added, pointing at him, “I am not going to don a mask.”

                “I never asked that my followers don a mask,” he told her indifferently, “only that they serve me faithfully. I do not need your belief or your undying devotion. I want your service.” He paused, glancing upward as he heard a small, faraway voice, and smiled. “Now,” he said pleasantly, unable to keep all the joy from his voice, visibly taking the woman aback more than any other part of this conversation, “I am being summoned elsewhere. I will see you again, Dorte,” he said, half threating, before he vanished.

 .

* * *

 

 .

                _“Sen, kroson veyn rok vust, nuz til lost nid staad fah mok,”_ Darva read slowly, struggling with the words, which translated roughly to “The boy wandered, working where he could, but there was no place for him.” She stopped, taking a drink of the water Bormah handed her. They sat on a padded bench that had appeared here one day with him. She wasn’t sure how he had brought it, and didn’t ask, because it seemed more magical that way. Sometimes, she liked to imagine he would bring her a pony.

                Gazing down at the book for a long moment, she finally ventured what she was thinking. “My brothers and sisters were like this,” she finally told Bormah. “They lost their families, and made do with what they could.”

                Bormah tilted his head, interested in spite of himself. “What did they do to get by?” he asked.

                Darva shrugged. “Blaise and Sofie lost their parents in the war. He worked and slept in a stable, and she would get up at dawn to go pick flowers, then sell them in the town. Lucia begged outside the Temple of Kynareth. Alesan delivered food to miners in the town where he and his sick father were dumped.” She nibbled her lip in thought, exactly how her mother did, “Aventus and Runa were from an orphanage. There’s more to it than that, only no one will tell me what it is.”

                “And Ys—your mother just picked them up and took them home?” he ventured.

                “Uh-huh,” she nodded, curls bobbing in exactly the same way his mother’s had. His had grown out as he got older, thank the Divines, but he suspected Darva’s would stay. “I bet,” she continued, “that if Momma had met the boy in the book, she would have taken him home too.”

                “I don’t doubt it,” he replied dryly. She looked at him questioningly, and he smiled reassuringly. “Go on.”

                She took another sip of water before continuing. _“Rok bahzim amativ, erei gein sul, peh naal redenteyk, rok ruund soven Raald do Kaan,”_ she stopped again, confused. “Secret temple? Why was the temple secret? And who is Kaan?”

                “Kynareth,” he supplied, watching the falls. “Kaan means Kyne, which is an old name for Kynareth.”

                Darva beamed. “You’re so smart, Bormah. I wish I could know as much as you do.”

                “I have read an awful amount of books,” he replied, tone loaded with irony. “There wasn’t much else to do, for a long while.”

                “Was the boy in the book Dovahkiin?” she asked guilelessly.

                The man twitched a little at the unexpected question. “Yes, though it was not called that yet. There had never been a Dovahkiin before,” he revealed.

                She gawped in surprise, “This must be a really old book!”

                “No. I copied down a much older story for you,” he temporized. “Children and old things do not mix well,” he halted when he realized just what he had said, for he was perhaps the very definition of an “old thing.”

                Darva scowled, scooting off the bench to walk around a bit. The bench was hard despite the pad, but Lydia had told her it was unladylike for a girl to rub her butt when she got up, so she contented herself with walking. “That’s what Momma says. She had a whole room of books we weren’t allowed to touch. Well, books and other things, but she moved them all to one of the other houses when Blaise kept breaking in. He said she kept most of her really interesting things in there.”

                “Like what?” he asked, curious.

                “Enchanted weapons, mostly, but also a collection of weird masks,” she told him, not noticing when he froze. “I didn’t like them; they gave me nightmares when I first saw them. Blaise and Alesan chased me around wearing them.” She turned her head to stare at him fully. “Momma said they once belonged to very bad men. I was really scared when I met you, because you had a mask, too, but then you took it off. Momma said the masks gave the bad men power, and a really bad man wouldn’t have taken it off and lost all that power, I think.”

                “You’re too young to know what men in power will or will not do,” he told her harshly, looking away. “How many of these does she have?”

                “I don’t know,” she replied, taken aback. “Did I say something wrong?”

                He sighed, then gave her the best smile he could, not wishing to alienate her, “Do not worry about it, Little Bee. I’ve simply had a few run-ins with bad men in masks. It does not mean that all who wear them are bad, though. You’ve seen your mother take them with her when she leaves, I’m sure? That is because they give power to whoever wears them, not just to bad people. Your mother uses that power for good.”

                “Like you?” she asked, hopping back up onto the bench.

                “What does the book say next?” he asked, not bothering to answer, which Darva took to mean she had asked a silly question. She turned her attention to the story and began to puzzle it out, Bormah prompting her when she faltered.

_“The boy went into the secret temple, within which an ancient tree of surpassing beauty grew. Around him, the Daughters of Kyne worked tirelessly, tending the garden and the large form in the center. The boy could not move when he spotted that form, frozen in terror. He had never seen a dragon so close. It was huge and gold, and oddly ungainly, with a swollen belly hidden by wings. He imagined it was full of unsuspecting humans that had gotten too close and offended the dragon. It was in this moment of terror that one of the Daughters noticed him, and chastised him for being there, for this was a place of women._

_Then the dragon looked up, regarding him with glowing eyes the color of the Sea of Ghosts, and asked him to come closer. After an eternal moment in which he expected to be eaten, she told the others to let him stay, for he was yet a child, not a man. The women went about their business, and the dragon told him she was_ _Lovaasunslaadhahnu, Kyne’s First Daughter.”_

                Darva paused, puzzled by the long name. “Lovaasunslaadhahnu,” he repeated when she asked. “It is made of the words _lovaas_ , or song; _unslaad,_ unending; and _hahnu,_ which means dream. Altogether, it is a formal term for ocean, which is like a sea only infinitely vaster. Her name is also unusual because it is comprised of three dragon words with more than one syllable, and is the only name I ever heard like that. Mostly, she was called Kaandiistmon—Kyne’s first daughter.”

                “You sound like you know a lot about her,” Darva surmised. “Do you know her?”

                There was a long pause as Bormah seemed to look inside himself, “She died a long time ago,” he finally said.

                “All the dragons died a long time ago,” she reminded him, “They came back.”

                “Not this one,” he said flatly. “The Firstborn of Akatosh had no love for the First Daughter of Kyne.”

                “Oh,” she said, sounding sad. He was about to say something when the sound of someone calling her name floated up from downhill. “Aventus,” she said. “Would you like to meet him?”

                “No,” Bormah said, much to her disappointment. “I do not want anyone to know I was here,” he reminded her, standing. “I will come again, Little Bee,” he promised, giving her a parting kiss on the forehead.

                Aventus crested the hill to see her gazing at the spot where he had been, supposedly only sitting on a bench staring at a waterfall, for the book always went with Bormah. “Darva? What are you doing up here? You know Mother wants everyone close to the house for right now.”

                “How did you know where to find me?” she asked, not looking at him.

                “I’ve seen you come down from here a few times,” he said, and she glanced at him, normally sweet face blank.

                “How long have you known I come up here?”

                “A while. I didn’t want to bother you, because sometimes I want to be alone, too,” he told her.

                “Have you told anyone?”

                “Why would I?” he scoffed. “If you want to spend your time staring at waterfalls, more power to you.”

                Unexpectedly, her face broke into a bright smile. “Aventus, you’re the best brother.”

                “Uh, thanks. I guess,” he replied, bemused, sweeping his dark hair off his forehead as he watched her. His littlest sister hopped off the bench and came over, taking his hand as they headed downhill.

                “Aventus, how do you supposed someone becomes a papa?” she asked.

                The boy’s face flushed painfully as he thought back to the rather embarrassing—and slightly intriguing—conversation Vilkas had had with him when the man returned home. “Uh, what do you mean?” he temporized.

                Darva looked up and giggled at his face. “I mean, what makes the Papas papas and not uncles?”

                “They’re around more, I guess,” he lied.

                “Then Uncle Inigo would be a papa, not an uncle,” she pointed out.

                “I…” Aventus swallowed, then tried, “I suppose it’s because they…love Momma.” He felt like his face was going to burst into flames as he said it.

                “Oh, I see. So if we wanted someone to become a papa, we would need for him to love Momma,” she concluded.

                “Well…” he couldn’t believe this conversation was happening, “Sure, I guess. As long as Momma loves him back, and he likes all of us.”

                “Hmmm…” she said thoughtfully. If Aventus was forced to put a word to the expression on her face, he would have described it as “devious,” but such a word did not seem to fit with his innocent little sister. “Do you think Argis is going to be a papa, or an uncle?” she asked him unexpectedly.

                “It’s not like we have a dozen papas,” he finally said, rolling his eyes. “There’s just the two, and I don’t think we’re likely to get any more. Besides, Argis is Mother’s housecarl.”

                “I thought Lydia was her housecarl, and that’s why Lydia isn’t an auntie,” she said, surprised.

                “They’re both housecarls,” he told her, and her expression told him that a lot suddenly made sense to her.

                “Then that scary woman with the crazy eyes really was a housecarl?” she asked incredulously.

                “That was Rayya and yes, she was,” Aventus confirmed with a shiver.

                “I thought she was a hobgoblin,” Darva revealed. “I thought she was going to eat me.”

                “There is no such thing as hobgoblins,” he told her, even though he wasn’t completely sure. Ysmir’s journal had a drawing of something that looked an awful lot like a hobgoblin living on Solstheim. “Besides, if anything was going to eat us, it would have been werewolves or dragons. Nothing else would dare,” he joked. All the kids knew their beloved Papas and Auntie were werewolves, but no one said anything, because they weren’t really supposed to know. It was obvious, though; each and every one of them had swept dark or red wolf hair out of the corners that had no business being there otherwise. If too much of it was allowed to gather into clumps, Precious started to growl at it. If they left it after that, the ice wolf would pee on it, so they were pretty good at getting it swept up.

                “And now we have vampires,” Darva mused, lips pursed. “Miss Serana isn’t an auntie; is she a housecarl?” Honey-bee queried after a long moment.

                “No, she’s a guest,” Aventus told her. “She likes us, but she’s not going to stay. She’s only here because…because she needs to be.”

                “How come no one wants to talk about Beth?” she asked him, a little exasperated.

                “Because no one wants to talk about her,” he said flatly, letting her know the conversation was over. She sighed, and he sighed in return, then finally challenged her to a race the rest of the way home, which seemed to cheer her up. He let her win, because he was her best big brother.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: Serana gets used to the household.


	26. Awkward Questions

               “I think I need to come South more often,” Serana said, eyes bright as they swept the sky, “The night is clear at the castle, but it’s so cold you can’t enjoy it for very long without being bundled up.”

                “I wasn’t aware vampires had a problem with cold,” Ysmir ventured, pouring and handing her friend a cup of tea. While vampires did not necessarily need to eat, they still enjoyed mortal foods, as she had found out the first time Marcurio pulled out a sweetroll in Serana’s presence.

                Serana looked thoughtful, “It’s not so much that it harms us as we prefer warmth. For me, it reminds me that I am undead, and I can’t help but feel that I’ll never be warm again.” As if to illustrate this, she took a sip of the tea, which was piping hot, and shivered with delight, smiling. It reminded Ysmir a bit of when she had seen a Khajiit imbibe a first taste of Moonsugar.

                “Serana…” she trailed off, not knowing how to broach what was on her mind. Finally, she just decided to blurt it out, “Have you ever thought of becoming human again?”

                The vampire looked up in surprise. “Not really. I’ve been this way for so long…” she looked down at the cup and added, dryly, “Though I suppose it would be nice not to always be so thirsty.”

                “Do you want to?” Ysmir asked, curious. “I’m not trying to push or pry, I just…Sometimes, when you say things like that, I wonder if you’re really happy.”

                The vampire exhaled softly, turning to look back over Lake Ilinalta, which was so still the moons, stars, and northern lights were reflected as perfectly as a mirror, creating the illusion that beyond the house lay only sky, like a window to Aetherius. “I suppose I’m as happy as I can be,” she said after a while. “All I really wanted was my family back together, but…well, we both know how that turned out. Mother is doing what she can to make it up to me, in her own way. I think…I don’t want to make any hasty decisions, and I am _not_ willing to undergo the ritual to make me a Daughter of Coldharbour a second time,” she shuddered, face waxy with more than moonlight. “If I became a human, it would be for good, because I’m not willing to become a weaker vampire and risk becoming a thrall to someone else.”

                “Speaking of which…” Ysmir trailed off, giving Serana a welcome opening to change the subject.

                “The girl is not a Volkihar vampire, as you thought. Therefore, I cannot control her as well as I could one of my own bloodline. I am a pure-blooded vampire, however, so I can control her somewhat. She cannot escape now, even if we untied her. I’ve ordered her not to attack any member of the house, or to keep information from you when questioned.”

                Ysmir blinked. “That’s it? I was under the impression a pure-blooded vampire could make a younger one their virtual slave, if they wanted.”

                Pursing her lips thoughtfully, Serana looked a bit uncomfortable with this assessment. “She’s not a young vampire, Ysmir. I mean, she’s younger than me, but she’s been around a long while, and has a formidable will. I cannot imagine what kind of trouble she must have given her parents as a human child, but that stubbornness has only grown with centuries. If I was to truly enthrall her, she might fight it until she damaged herself. That’s why many older vampires make alliances rather than enthralling each other—there is less watching your back. Not much less, but less. A friend turned enemy is still better than a slave that has broken their chains, especially one whose mind was broken by them.”

                The Dragonborn was the first to look away this time, a little appalled by this glimpse into the life of a vampire. Not that living within the higher ranks of the Thalmor was much better, but at least everyone pretended to like each other (mostly) and no one was in danger of losing themselves without...All right, in some cases it was exactly like living with the Thalmor. “Well,” she said after a long pause, “at least we don’t have to worry about her somehow shimmying out of the ropes, anymore.”

                “No,” Serana confirmed, “You don’t. She can even be allowed to walk around a bit. You may want to watch your eldest boy, though. He might mistake her not attacking as…well, her choosing not to attack, rather than being coerced not to.”

                “Still?” Ysmir groaned, rubbing her forehead as her temple began to throb. “What am I going to do with him?”

                “I’d suggest sending him away until this business is over with,” Serana told her. “Though I don’t think he’s likely to forget her. You did check him for bites, right?”

                “I asked Argis to check. Aventus was furious at me, and embarrassed, but Lydia decided to tell him some stories of when we were in the Dawnguard together, and he seems to have accepted that it was necessary. He hasn’t forgiven us, though.”

                “I was surprised to see him here. Argis, I mean,” Serana confessed, pouring herself a second cup of tea. “I got the impression that he loved the Reach.”

                Ysmir smiled, “He does, but I think he was bored. Also, he missed Lucia. She lived in Markarth for a while before I had this place finished. I didn’t mean to keep her there so long—that city isn’t safe, in my opinion—but…I don’t know. It’s like she gentled him, or something.”

                Serana chuckled, “And after all that talk about not being a babysitter!”

                The redhead flushed, “Right…you were there for that.”

                The vampire laughed aloud at her friend’s embarrassment, and ducked the mage’s mock-punch. “It was nice of them to clear out the tower storeroom for me,” she said reflectively. “I expected to have a bedroll on the floor, not an actual bed.”

                Grinning, Ysmir replied, “That would be the work of the twins. They’re usually thoughtful like that. Lydia would have just offered you her bed—then Argis would have insisted Aela take his, even though she prefers to sleep outside.”

                “She likes sleeping outside?” Serana asked incredulously. “Not even in a tent?”

                “Not even in a tent,” Ysmir confirmed, a little amused at her friend’s reaction. She had traveled with Serana for a year, and had a few adventures with her after that, but this was the first time she had truly seen the vampire act like a princess.

                “Is that why she smells so strange?” Serana asked, mostly to herself. “Her and the two men…do the twins sleep outside?”

                “No, they sleep with me,” Ysmir replied thoughtlessly, then caught Serana’s wide-eyed gaze. “What?”

                “Both of them?” the vampire asked, “All of you in the same…” she hesitated, “room?”

                “Bed,” she corrected, wanting to get this over with. “We share a bed. All three of us. Usually.”

                She had the rare pleasure of seeing her friend completely flummoxed. “I…did not expect that of you, Ysmir. I mean, some of the Clan do so, but they are usually older and a bit…jaded.”

                “I don’t think I’m jaded,” she replied defensively. “I just…well, there’s the dragon thing, and the twins share pretty much everything else. And it’s not like any of us intended it to happen it just…did.”

                “How?” Serana asked with impish curiosity, actually leaning forward with interest.

                Ysmir thought she must be glowing, she was blushing so hard. “Well…Farkas and I were lovers for a few months when one day after we had cleared out a dragon lair Vilkas barged in, holding this big rose staff and drunk off his mind—”

                “A rose staff?” Serana interrupted, sitting up. “Like the one Marcurio was holding that night he came back to camp and asked us both to marry him?”

                “Just like, now that you mention it,” Ysmir replied, surprised. She had mostly forgotten the thing after the embarrassing scene afterwards. “I am starting to get very nervous about any tale that begins with ‘I met this man named Sam.’”

                “When was this? I remember you mentioning Farkas before, but you weren’t lovers, and I distinctly remember you mentioning that you thought his brother hated you,” Serana queried, tipping the teapot and not receiving anything. She shrugged and put it down, lacing her slender fingers together over her knee.

                “I thought he did. It took me a long time to figure out that Vilkas doesn’t like anyone when he meets them. He regards just about everyone with suspicion at first, except probably Farkas, and even then they had nine months in a womb together to kick it out,” she said dryly.

                “Might prove troublesome if you decide to marry one of them,” the vampire pointed out, hair sweeping over her shoulder as she tilted her head to the side, obviously digging for something.

                “I wouldn’t,” Ysmir snapped, then tried to relax. “They know that. We’re all friends, and we enjoy each other’s company but…marriage isn’t for me, and they know that. They wouldn’t want to marry me anyway; I’m too independent.”

                “I don’t think a member of the Companions would scorn a woman just for being independent,” Serana pointed out, obviously disappointed. “What do you have against marriage anyway, Ysmir? I mean, I know why I wouldn’t want…the whole thing with temples…but why do you shun it? Don’t you want to give your children a father?”

                “They have two perfectly capable fathers,” Ysmir said tartly, standing. The image of Miraak, his face holding such pleasure when she told him of Darva’s first Shout, flitted through her mind. She forcibly pushed it away. It couldn’t happen. Not him. Not ever. “It’s late, and I’ve been all over Skyrim this last week. I’m going to get some sleep.”

                Serana frowned, “Ysmir, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

                “It’s alright,” the woman lied, taking a breath and trying to make the words true. “Just…I’m never unclear to my lovers, Serana; they know what they’re getting themselves into, and what they’re not. This is just how I am. Good night.”

                “Good night,” the vampire replied, quite taken aback. She watched her friend disappear down the ladder with a sense of regret, turning to look down into the lake as clouds slowly rolled in to obscure the stars and moons. The northern lights still shown through, giving the night a greenish hue.

                Somewhere in the forest, wolves howled.

.

* * *

 . 

                “You’re heading out again?” Darva cried out in dismay as she peeked into her mother’s room and caught her packing away a few freshly mended mage robes, carefully checking them for pins as she went. The little girl’s eyes were wide and faintly accusing, and her blond curls were still disheveled from sleep. “You just got back!”

                “I’m not heading out today, sweetie,” Ysmir assured her, walking over and sweeping the child into her arms. “I’m just…being prepared.”

                “You’re away more than here,” her daughter complained, pouting. Darva could pull off pouting very well, Ysmir reflected, unlike her mother, who only managed to look like she was squinting with a stung lip. It must be something she inherited from her father, although for the life of her Ysmir could not picture Miraak pouting.

                “Not by choice, love,” Ysmir assured her, abandoning packing in favor of heading down to breakfast. Her other children were still straggling in, bleary eyed, but Argis and Lydia were halfway through their meal, and Runa had apparently been in the mood to fry up griddle cakes, judging by the large stack of them on a platter in the very center of the table. Ysmir was pleasantly surprised to see that someone had either found or made a bottle of maple syrup since the last time they ate it all.

                “Watchers are back,” Aela greeted her as she walked in the door, the twins close behind her.

                Ysmir rolled her eyes, “When will they give up?”

                Farkas was the only one who answered, and with a shrug rather than actual words, as Runa came back out of the kitchen with a platter of ham slices and three wolfie noses twitched. Ysmir smothered a grin in a piece of bread as they all sat and immediately reached for the platter, and her daughter yanked it away with a stern look, serving them each a few slices herself to make sure they left some for everyone else.

                “Where are they this time?” Ysmir asked, setting Darva in her usual chair (the one with the thick book on it) and putting a bowl of porridge before her, giving her a stern look when the girl would have reached for the nut-cakes.

                “On the northern ridge, across the lake,” Vilkas answered around a mouthful of ham and hard-boiled egg. Somehow, he managed to answer without either showing the food he was chewing, or spitting any of it out. She wished her sons would acquire that skill, since she didn’t seem to be getting anywhere trying to get them to not speak with their mouths full. “It seems they bought a bigger spyglass, just for the occasion.”

                “What occasion?” Serana asked, coming in from the back room while toweling her hair dry. She hadn’t put on her armor yet, and the vermillion tunic she wore clung to her damply in some spots. Her charcoal pants ended at the ankle over bare feet; Ysmir had never seen her look so casual.

                “The Blades are spying on the house,” the Dragonborn filled her in as Farkas goggled, Aela raised a hand in greeting, and Vilkas tensed all over. Argis stood and offered her his spot, taking his empty plate into the kitchen.

                “I do wish they would stop,” Lydia sighed, following his lead. “Even though I know they’re probably only watching for Paarthurnax, I _hate_ the feeling of someone watching me.”

                “Why do you let them persist?” Serana asked curiously, settling herself across from Aela and taking a sweetroll for formality’s sake while Vilkas continued to stare intently. She raised an eyebrow at him, “Do you mind? Lydia’s not the only one who doesn’t like to be stared at.”

                Blaise snickered, but subsided immediately with the dark look Vil gave him, hard enough to even stop Alesan mid-yawn as he slid into his seat, giving his brother a bleary-eyed questioning glance. Both of them got a plate and started loading it up in an unusually meek manner.  

                “I didn’t know vampires ate,” he said, and Ysmir glanced upward, silently beseeching Stendarr for patience.

                “Who doesn’t like sweetrolls?” she asked with a rather good impression of innocence, popping a piece into her mouth and letting her eyelids flutter closed in pleasure as the sugar hit her tongue. Oh dear, Ysmir thought, noting the familiar sparkle in her amber eyes, the slight upward quirk of her lips. It seemed Serana had decided Vil would be fun to prod, and the werewolf did not respond well to prodding. Then again, neither had Isran, but the leader of the Dawnguard couldn’t change into a seven-foot ravaging beast when he was miffed.

                Aventus, who had been staring pensively into his porridge this entire time, finally put in a word, “Do you think Beth is hungry by now?”

                Everyone paused, glancing at the boy, who looked up from his bowl with a slightly rebellious expression. “I know she likes food, and I haven’t seen anyone take any in there. Do you intend to starve her?”

                “No,” Serana said gently, but firmly, as she put the sweetroll down. “That’s partially why I’m here. She’s not going to starve. The worst that’s going to happen for now is boredom.”

                “So you’re bringing her food?” he asked, his gaze focused firmly on her now.

                “She’s bringing her blood,” Ysmir put in bluntly, and saw Sofie blanch and push her plate away, appetite lost.

                There was a long pause as the teenager gazed back down at his bowl, obviously thinking furiously. “May I help?” he finally asked.

                Ysmir felt her jaw drop open. “No,” Vil and Aela said together. Farkas was too busy choking to reply. Serana, however, had a rather neutral expression, her eyes flickering down to the table before anyone could catch her gaze.

                “I see,” he said, then pushed back from the table. “Excuse me,” he added, then headed outside.

                The Dragonborn put her face in her hands, rubbing the bridge of her nose as the all-too-frequent headache threatened to return. “Please tell me this isn’t a teenage thing. I don’t know if I can go through seven more years of this—for each of them.”

                “Can I be excused, too?” Sofie asked, still looking a bit green. “I’m feeling a bit…queasy.”

                “Take a piece of fruit or something if you get hungry later,” Ysmir advised.

                “If Beth eats blood does that mean that she’ll try to eat Aventus if he goes in there?” Darva asked artlessly, glancing about, “Because I don’t want her to do that.”

                “She won’t,” Serana and Vil said at the same time, looked at each other, then away. Farkas finally managed to swallow whatever it was he had been choking on, with the assistance of Aela’s fist pounding on his back as she reminded him that humans actually had to _chew_ their food.

                Lydia came back in, a bit of hay in her hair. “Courier came by,” she said, handing a message to Ysmir. “Looks like Jarl Season is starting again.”

                “Jarl Season?” Serana repeated, amused.

                “You know; when the bandits start attacking more caravans to prepare for winter and suddenly every Jarl needs my assistance immediately. Jarl Season. It’s a bit early for it, but bandits don’t like to send out itineraries.” Ysmir said absently, unfolding the paper. She froze, then stood abruptly. “It’s from Brelyna in Winterhold; she says Augie wants to speak to me.”

                Vil’s frown deepened—which was slightly impressive, considering how hard he had already been frowning—but it was his brother who asked, “Augie?” with mere curiosity, forgoing the suspicion his twin would have put in the name.

                “A friend. He has visions. He wouldn’t have called unless he saw something that I needed to know.” Her eyes flickered to Darva, and both men’s faces lit with understanding.

                “You said you weren’t leaving today!” Darva protested, round face anguished.

                “I’m sorry, Honey-bee; this is important, and it’s already been almost a week for the courier to get here.” She bent, kissing her daughter on the forehead. “I’ll try to get all my business done quickly, so that I don’t have to leave again until the jarls call me out.”

                “Take me with you,” the little girl begged.

                Ysmir sighed. “I can’t this time, sweetheart. But I’ll let you know the moment I can come back. I promise.”


	27. Caged

            Odahviing was not thrilled to be called upon once again, but since it had something to do with Darva, he relented. The condition, however, was that they depart immediately afterward for Miraak’s Temple, provided the news did not require them to do something else urgently.

            The skies were becoming familiar to Ysmir, and not for the first time she wished for wings of her own. There had been a few times before she learned to control her fire magic—just about the only legacy from The Bastard’s line she appreciated—that she had felt as if she had them. The first two times she had summoned her Flame Cloak and ignited the world around her she had felt spectral wings rising from her shoulders. She had felt powerful, at a time when nothing made sense and she was at the whim of circumstance. Or possibly the Divines—she wasn’t quite sure how else she could have blundered into Skyrim right in the path of an Imperial Scout.

            Well, at the time she was fairly out-of-sorts. She’d had a concussion from Inigo’s skooma-addled attack and had just snuck out of a Temple of Kynareth, where the priestesses had been adamant on her staying in bed until she was healed. Being little less than a year since she had escaped the grasp of the Thalmor, Ysmir had assumed they were only keeping her there to turn her back over to them.

            She smiled wanly, gazing down at Whiterun as it passed below them. That skinny, distrustful waif might as well be a different person entirely. Of course, if the Thalmor figured out who she was there would be hell to pay. Not only had she betrayed her bloodline and abandoned her mission, she had killed a very useful pawn in the Empire and gone on to become some kind of legendary hero and a general thorn in their side. The Thalmor handled betrayal much like they handled Talos worship—though the torture lasted quite a bit longer on someone who had been one of their own.

            “You are shifting quite a bit, Dovahkiin. _Fosro folaas?_ Something bothers you,” Odahviing observed.

            “I’m fine,” she yelled, the words ripped from her mouth by the winds.

            _“Zu'u bolog wah dumed._ You do not fool me, Dovahkiin,” he reproached, swooping down to land on a mountainside with nothing on it. This was necessary whenever he carried humans, for the air aloft was thin, and he had found that if he landed every once in a while they were less likely to pass out and fall off. Of course, he had yet to have this problem with Ysmir. “Now, tell me what is troubling you so.”

            “You already know my current problem,” she pointed out.

            _“Vahzah,_ I know your current problem, but this is an unease I have sensed from you before. This _arokon_ is seated in your soul like an old wound. Like a bone that healed without being snapped back into place, you may have to re-break it to set it right.”

            She sighed, seeing that there was no avoiding this. “Odahviing…do you ever think about the past?” she ventured.

            _“Ustiid?_ From time to time. Some dwell on it more than others, but I prefer to look forward. The past is gone, but we must still deal with the future,” he replied, lowering his head so that she could dismount.

            Ysmir let her gaze wander over the woods below them. Skyrim in winter was beautiful and harsh together, more so than in any other place she had ever been. The skeletal branches of the few non-evergreen trees she saw rustled slightly in the mountain breeze, their tiniest branches interweaving to form intricate patterns against the slate-grey sky. “I haven’t told many people this, but the people who raised me…they did not think of me as a person. I was a tool, a commodity to them. About a year before Alduin returned I escaped them, although it wasn’t necessarily what I meant to do at the time.” A breath burst from her lungs as she realized she was rambling slightly. “I was scared, so scared, when I faced my first dragon. I was frightened when I fought Alduin. I’ve been in more battles than I can count, and I’ve learned not to be afraid of them. I’m not afraid of death, Odahviing,” she looked up at him hopelessly, “but the thought of _them_ finding me, discovering that I escaped them? That terrifies me as nothing else does.”

            The red dragon tilted his head, studying her. For a heart-stopping moment she wondered if he thought less of her. She certainly did. No matter how mighty she became, the great Dragonborn, she was still reduced to being that frightened child at the thought of being returned to the Thalmor.

            _“Zu'u koraav._ You were brought up in a cage. This explains much about you.” He moved to settle himself a bit more comfortably and lowered his head to gaze into her eyes. “Paarthurnax has told you of the dragon caught in that trap you set for me? I feared greatly when you caught me so. I was humiliated and terrified I would be as he was. Numinex went mad while he resided in Dragonsreach, unable to see the sky or feel the wind, subjected to the whims of those who held him. So were you raised. You are a _dovah_ , and to fear being forced to return to your cage is natural. It may never leave you.”

            For a long moment she couldn’t speak, tears pricking her eyes. “It shames me.”

            _“Zu'u mindok._ We _dov_ find it difficult to forget that which broke our pride. But you are here now, and you have found your _thu’um._ You will not be imprisoned so again, for you have but to call my name and I will come for you, even if I must rend earth to get to you.”

            She ducked her head, struggling to get her expression under control. _“Nox hi,_ Odahviing, but it is not just for myself that I fear anymore. They would slaughter my friends, and enslave my children. I don’t even know what they would do with Darva, but I can make a few guesses, and I would kill her myself before I let even one of them befall her, if I had no other choice.”

            He mantled his wings a bit in surprise at the fierce words, his eyes widening. “Such despair. I never thought to see it in you, Ysmir. That you would kill your child rather than have her fall into their hands…how likely is this fear to pass? _Hi lost zey havaas._ Your worry has infected my mind.”

            Ysmir shook her head, “That’s the thing; it gets less likely every year. When I ran…everything behind me burned. There was no reason for them to even suspect that I survived. And since then…I’ve had my elven features removed to a casual glance. Someone would have to look hard to see traces of any kind of elf in me.”

            _“Fahliil?_ So it was elves that raised you? It has been a few weeks at least since I ate an elf.”

            She stared at him, then burst out laughing. “You’re right; I suppose I need not fear them as much, anymore. Still…”

            _“Krosis,”_ he said sympathetically, “That fear will remain, Dovahkiin, until you are able to face it head on. I do not know how you can do so without endangering those who have come to depend on you. _Votrul_ …it is not a simple problem.”

            “But that is,” she noted, nodding to the troll that had just emerged from the trees to roar with rage at the sight of them, jumping about and flinging snow.

            “Simple indeed. _Ufiik_ do not taste very good. Therefore, I suggest we continue on our way.” Odahviing lowered his head so that she could climb up on the thinnest part of his neck. _“Kos ahst forveyk._ Do not worry, Dovahkiin. You are not the first of the Dragon Blood to bear the shame of imprisonment. We are creatures of the _lok,_ and once we have suffered the loss of our freedom, we will forever fear it. _Faal Sizaan Gein_ never ceased trying to escape Dragonsreach until they broke his wings. Durnehviir allowed you to summon him to see the skies of _Keizaal_ once more. Alessia worked tirelessly to overthrow those who enslaved her. And you have seen for yourself the lengths the Allegiance Guide went to in order to escape Oblivion.”

            “He didn’t go as far as he was planning,” she said without thinking, recalling that instant she sat frozen under his gaze. He had been the first to move, and his action hadn’t been to finish her off, though it easily could have been.

            Odahviing surprised her by laughing. “He was foolish to think he could kill you—the _dov_ _ah_ in him is too strong for that. You were fighting, and instinct took over.”

            “Instinct?” she echoed, not having a clue what he meant.

            The red dragon more laughed out his fire breath than Shouted, leaving the troll quite the worse for wear at his mirth as he rose higher into the skies. _“Geh,_ instinct, Dovahkiin. You two had been locked in battle long-standing. How else do you think a female _dov_ _ah_ decides if a male is worthy of her?”

 .

* * *

 

 .

            Babette stared up at the older vampire suspiciously. “What is this?” she asked, holding up her unbound hands and stretching out the kinks that days of being in the same position had left.

            “I’m not going to carry you around in that chair,” Serana replied, turning and walking to the door.

Without thought Babette started to follow, then halted and scowled. “So you’re taking me for a walk, like a pet?”

            “Don’t be stupid,” Serana replied, putting a hand on her hip, “No one thinks of you as a pet. If anything, most of the household sees you as a menace. Unfortunately, you’re a menace that is starting to smell, and Ysmir doesn’t want you to suffer unduly during your stay.”

            The little vampire’s eyebrows rose. “She is aware that I’m here to kill her, right?”

            “Of course,” Serana replied with a little smile, then headed out of the room. Babette followed unwillingly, fighting each step until she was red-faced from effort and the older vampire stopped and sighed. “I can leave you in that chair, but you’ll be a lot more comfortable clean.” After a few moments of deliberation the smaller vampire walked forward of her own accord.

The main hall of the house was much bigger than she had thought walking in that first night, and she looked around shamelessly as Serana led her down some steps and into the dining room. No one seemed to be about. The hall was lit mostly with enchanted mage lights rather than sunlight, still both vampires breathed a small sigh of relief when they climbed down into the cellar that appeared to be half mead room, half temple, which Babette found interesting and semi-amusing. She gave the shrines of the Nine a wide berth as they went through to a practice room, then turned right to a little hallway. Steam billowed out the door Serana opened, and Babette glanced around. The room was stone with a cone-shaped ceiling designed to catch condensation in little rivulets that ran down to a drain. The stone seemed have been cut as perfectly as possible to avoid having mortar exposed, and the seams seemed to be painted over with resin to keep the joints from getting rotten.

            “This, so they tell me, is the girl’s room,” Serana said pleasantly, opening a small wooden door liberally coated with more resin. There were three of them, one on each side of the cone-ceilinged room, with the entrance behind them.

            Babette stepped inside.

            Steam danced around them, slightly smelling of soap and wood. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness and she saw steps going up to a square stone basin fully large enough for several people and deep enough that the water would be up to her chest. The sound of running water nearby told her that it probably sat adjacent to an underground stream leading into the lake.

            “I’m not sure if they came up with this system, or if Ysmir found it in one of her books,” Serana was saying, crouching to open a grate of Dwarven metal—probably salvaged from a ruin—to poke at the fire beneath it. “Sofie volunteered one of her dresses for you, so you don’t have to put your dirty clothes back on. She’s offered to wash and mend the one you’re wearing, as well.”

            Babette blinked. “She…she what?”

            Her keeper gave her an unreadable look. “She’s offered to help take care of you.”

            “Why?” Babette asked incredulously, unable to fathom why the girl would do any such thing.

            “Oh, it’s not just her,” Serana stated, standing and dusting off her hands on her pants. “Aventus asked to bring you food, Darva keeps trying to get us to let her bring you honey cakes, Blaise and Alesan keep trying to climb up to your window, and Runa and Ma’Rakha are trying to get you allowed out in the house by offering to watch you.”

            The assassin just stared at her, stunned. “But…I came here to kill their mother. Did no one tell them?”

            “Yes, but they think that once you realize what a great person she is, you’ll stop,” Serana revealed.

            Babette snorted, then tossed her head to get her hair out of her face, but it was so damp after just a few moments in the room that it clung to her cheek. Serana smiled a little. “I’ll leave you to it. Don’t take too long,” she advised, heading passed the girl and out the door.

            Well, it wasn’t like there was an escape rout in here, or anything. Unless she felt like setting herself on fire, anyway. Or trying to drown herself. In any case, she wasn’t ready to meet her Dread Father quite yet.

            So the children still cared what happened to her, did they? Babette pondered this as she extracted herself from the filthy, sodden dress she wore and slipped into the blessedly hot water, gasping at the feel of it. That was…unexpected. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it. On the one hand, she might be able to find a way to use that to her advantage. On the other…a soft smile curled up the corners of her lips, then disappeared in a scowl. What did she want with a bunch of human children, anyway? She was long passed wanting to play, unless it was the way a hunter toyed with their prey. She had all the family she needed or wanted in the Dark Brotherhood.

            Besides, there was no way she could leave Ysmir alive.

            Thoughts whirling, the little assassin scrubbed herself pink, rinsing her hair several times. Her dress was ruined, she reflected as she glanced at it. That Ice Spike had torn right through the shoulder, and it was stiff with blood. Scowling again, because she had liked that dress, the girl scrubbed at her neck.

            Then paused.

            Her fingers trailed down the sharp line of the chain to the amulet Aventus had given her. Cupping it in her palms, she gazed at her reflection within it. Her irises were lost to the ruby, but her face was clear enough; pale, slightly gaunt. Her lashes and pupils were like dark holes bore into the stone. Impatient with herself, she grasped it and prepared to tug it from her neck, but stopped again, strangely unable to fulfill the motion.

            Her enthraller rapped sharply on the door, asking if she were done yet. With a sigh of resignation, Babette climbed out of the water, slightly surprised at how cool the steam-filled air felt after being submerged. The dress Sofie had given her was folded on a chest not too far away, out of the path of the steam. Babette changed quickly, finding it a fair fit, even if Sofie’s arms were a bit longer than hers. She looped the sash into place and headed out the door, looking up at Serana.

            “The dress is hopeless,” was all she said.

            “I figured it would be,” Serana replied. “I’ll throw it away before Sofie tries to fix it. She’ll feel badly if she can’t, I think.”

            Babette nodded. That certainly fit with her estimation of the girl. She was too sensitive by half.

            The vampires walked out of the bathing room, finding the hall significantly cooler. Neither shivered. Serana placed a gentle hand behind Babette’s back and she tensed, but the woman was only pushing her forward. Scowling again, the assassin walked to the practice room, only to halt in consternation.

            Aventus was there.

            He didn’t notice her at first. He was bent over, wrenching throwing daggers out of a target. As if he felt them watching he turned, his face going still when he saw them. For a long moment they simply stared at each other, not moving.

            “Hello, Aventus,” Serana finally said, breaking the moment.

            He nodded, “Miss Serana,” he replied politely. “May I talk with Beth—I mean, Babette—for a moment?”

            “I don’t think your mother would like it if I left you two alone,” Serana began, but Babette snorted.

            “You have me under enough restrictions to make a mammoth balk. If he wants to say something, let him get it off his chest,” she snapped, giving the woman a withering look before glaring fiercely at the boy. “What is it? You want to know how I could do this? How I could possibly be a member of the Dark Brotherhood? Or perhaps you want to ask if I really intend on killing your mother. Well, I do. It’s my contract, and I’m not going home in disgrace.”

            He regarded her for a long moment as she glowered at him, then finally asked, “Are you alright?”

            The glower vanished as her mouth dropped open, not knowing what to think. Seconds passed before she was able to respond. “I’m an _assassin._ A murder. I’m here to kill someone you care about; doesn’t that _bother_ you? Why in Oblivion do you care if I’m alright?”

            Aventus shrugged, looking sort of helpless. “I don’t know. But I do.”

            “You…” Babette struggled to force words around the mysterious lump in her throat. “You _stupid_ boy! You imbecilic _child!_ I am a killer! I’d as soon eat you as look at you! Don’t you dare say you care about me! Don’t you understand what I am? Don’t you get why I’m here?”

            He swallowed but firmed his shoulders. “You’re here because someone wants my mother dead. Wants it badly enough to pay for it.”

            “Yes, you moron, but I’m also here because I _like_ doing it! It doesn’t matter to me who I kill, as long as I get to! I. Am. A monster,” she spat, desperately trying to get him to understand and not even knowing why she bothered.

            “Perhaps,” he said, voice only shaking slightly, “But I still care.”

            “Well…don’t!” she spat, feeling her face contort into a vampiric snarl. The boy flinched, then firmed, his gaze never straying. “I used you,” she hissed, reaching up and tearing the amulet from her neck. “I befriended you only to get close to my mark. If needed, I would have killed you to get her guard down! _That’s_ the kind of person I am! Not some…some simpering girl who spends her time playing and picking flowers!”

            A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips for a moment, shocking her into silence. “You still would have picked flowers,” he told her assuredly. “A blind person could tell you like Alchemy.” Aventus shook his head, looking down a moment, waves of dark hair swinging momentarily before his gaze rose abruptly to lock on hers, something she had been strenuously avoiding. “I really don’t care that you’re a vampire. I don’t care that you’re an assassin. I just…care about you.”

            Babette gave a slight sound of frustration—she wouldn’t call it a sob, exactly—threw the pendant at his head and raced for the ladder to the main house, climbing up so quickly she was nothing but a blur. She meant to run right outside, then into the woods where she could escape, but the binds the Volkihar had placed on her mind were too strong, and she found herself right back where she had started, in the smelly little room with a chair and nothing else. Only, now it had more. There was a small bed there, and several books. Not a pallet on the floor, with nothing to occupy her time. Not the prison it was before. Now it was a bedroom, with books. There were even a few changes of clothes folded neatly on the bed, and a small, well-worn doll half-hidden in the folds.

            The small, unwarranted comforts shocked her no end, and she glared at the room so hard it should have caught fire, but she had no such abilities.

            “He’s going to be a heartbreaker in a couple of years,” Serana stated, catching up with her. “I wonder where he learned to smolder like that?”

            “Oh, go pester a dragon,” Babette muttered.

            “Let’s not ruin a second dress with bloodstains,” the older vampire said, not unkindly, as she pulled out a handkerchief and wiped at Babette’s cheeks.

            The assassin jerked her face away from the woman’s reach. “It’s just water dripping from my hair,” she said.

            “Right,” Serana said agreeably, handing the red-stained handkerchief to her. “No tears at all.”

            “None,” Babette replied fiercely, wiping at her own face. But long after her hair had dried, the red drops kept coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My life is being entirely crazy this year, so sorry for the hiatus. ^^; I might get around to adding summaries and and stuff, but honestly my computer is down and I'm looking after two kids now, soooooo....yeah.


	28. Revelations

            Rather than run the gauntlet of greeting her fellow mages, Ysmir had elected to enter the College through the Midden Dark entrance, an out-of-the way opening in the ice that she didn’t think anyone else really knew about. If they had, the apprentices would get out for mischief far more often, and she wouldn’t have to kill so many blighted frostbite spiders every time she used it. Then again, the story of the missing apprentices was one whispered by every new generation of aspiring mages, trying to scare each other with ghost stories around the soft blue light of the magelight well that centered their hall. It could just be that the younger mages feared the Midden Dark was haunted.

            “You’re here,” the Augur’s weary, deep voice echoed against the ice around her as if he were talking from the bottom of a well.

            Ysmir jumped. “Honestly, can’t you just wait until I’m closer to scare me out of my skin?”

            “Apologies,” he replied, and remained silent until she had reached his room, which had the opposite effect than she wanted, making the frosty air shiver with the anticipation of his voice in the echoing silence.

            “What did you need?” she asked trepidatiously, dropping onto her sitting stone without bothering to warm it.

            “I had a vision,” he replied in his ghostly hollow voice, “A vision of a realm beside Oblivion, where rivers of light and memory rush passed each other like currents in the sea. They parted, as if around an island, and there rested the World Eater, head bowed, shackled and held by six chains.”

            Ysmir stared at him, wide-eyed. “So he’s alive?”

            “No. And yes. He is outside life, trapped in a pocket between ages. His chains are forged of light and dark, the links those souls he had devoured. And half are tied to Nirn at three points in time and space.”

            The Dragonborn frowned. “What do you mean, Augie?”

            The Augur was silent a moment, as if picking his words. Sometimes Ysmir wondered if speaking was difficult for him, as his cadence was rather odd and his speech ponderous, and often he would disappear for days after doing so. “These three chains reach to Skuldafn eight years ago, the top of the Throat of the World ages ago, and at some point in the future. I cannot see where it is tied. The remaining chains culminate in three pillars, like incandescent Standing Stones. One is you, Ysmir. I can sense you from it. The others, I cannot say.”

            She closed her eyes, fighting the heavy sense of foreboding that clawed at her, trying to overwhelm her ability to reason. Part of her earliest training was in pushing back such emotions, but it was much harder now to dismiss the fear when it was not simply for her survival, but for Darva’s. “Three points where he is defeated,” she surmised, “And the pillars would be those that defeated him. So…one would probably be Hakon One-Eye, Felldir the Old, and Gormlaith Golden-Hilt, another is me, and the third…wouldn’t you sense if it was Darva?” she asked, a little desperately.

            “No, I would not. I have met with you numerous times, Ysmir. I am attuned to your energy. I have never met your child. I could not tell unless I spent time with her, and she has much growing to do. It could be she changes completely from childhood to adulthood. There is no way to tell.” There was a long pause, as if he were drawing in breath. “There are…symbols on the Stones, as on their physical counterparts.”

            “What symbols?” she asked warily.

            “Each is marked with the Akaviri symbol for Dragonborn.”

            Her heart sank. “So it couldn’t be the original Nords who defeated them. They were Tongues, not Dragonborn.” She frowned as something else occurred to her, “I’m the only Dragonborn to have defeated Alduin.”

            Another pause. “There are three Dragonborn now,” he said gently.

            She stared at him, so many emotions roiling inside her she felt sick with them. “No. No way. He was supposed to defeat Alduin when he first lived. He gave up that chance. He’s a self-serving, egotistical tyrant that chose power over responsibility. There is no way he would choose to do what’s right now.”

            “Even for his daughter?” Augie asked, flooring her.

            “He doesn’t even know Darva,” she countered. Augie was silent. “Is that all you saw?” she asked him after a few uncomfortable moments.

            “Yes,” came the response, oddly breathy for a being that didn’t breath.

            “Then…I should go. I still have to go see His Highness before I can go home, and I just want to get it over with,” she muttered the last under her breath.

            “Ysmir,” the Augur called, surprising her. “I also…wanted to thank you.”

            She blinked. “For what?”

            “Brelyna. She is…quite pleasant to speak with. She comes down every few days to read to me.”

            A small smile curled the edges of her lips up. “You’re welcome. I’m glad you two are getting along.”

            “She worries about you,” he added. “Why did you never tell her you were the Dragonborn?”

            “I didn’t want people here to know. It was bad enough when they had me summoning my Flame Cloak every other day so they could figure out how I could do so without actually casting a spell or being Dunmer; could you imagine what a mess it would be if they had me Shouting to study it? And the dark looks if I refused!” She actually managed a chuckle. “Once, you told me that too much knowledge would never bring happiness. No one has bothered to inform them.”

            “She was hurt, learning it from me,” he said, and she winced guiltily. “I will…tell her it was not a slight on your part.”

            “Thank you. I really don’t want to go upstairs to find her and apologize. I’d be here all day.”

            “And much into the night and tomorrow,” he affirmed. “The Thalmor advisor wishes to study you more. He senses something about you is not right.”

She shuddered. “Best to avoid that then. Ancano may be arrogant, but he’s too clever by half.” Actually, that described too many men in her life, nowadays.

“When you go to the island, have the Red Dragon land on the summit overlooking the city.” Augie advised. “Miraak will be roused by his follower’s alarm.”

            She frowned, “City?”

            There was a sound suspiciously like a snicker that shocked her almost as much as his words. “Yes, Dragonborn. City.”

.

* * *

 .

            “What do you think you’re doing?”

            Serana glanced to the side of the door she had just walked through at the angry, low rumble that greeted her from the side of the doorframe. She plastered a rather bland look on her face when she saw it was Vilkas hissing at her. Unlike the other times she had seen him, he was wearing his armor, and she wondered if that was a rather unsubtle hint that he thought her a threat. “I think I’m taking care of a younger vampire, as asked. Why? What do you think I’m doing?” she asked.

            His silver-grey eyes flashed and she almost smiled. She could certainly see what Ysmir liked about the man; he was all fire and ice behind those strange eyes. All three of the Companions had those eyes, not just the twins, and something about it pricked at her consciousness, but she couldn’t get it to come to the front. “Aventus,” was all he said.

            Serana sighed, real sympathy crossing her face and taking the man by surprise. She almost sighed again; did he think her unfeeling? How could anyone not be sympathetic to what the boy was going through? “I wasn’t expecting him to be there.”

            Anger flooded his features again, but the faint sound of a foot scuffing behind them made him pause. Serana froze, eyes widening slightly as she stared. He glanced back at her face and snorted in impatience, grabbing her forearm and towing her out the door and into the overcast day as she hastily pulled her hood up. He didn’t stop until they were well away from the house, and had been walking for some time down a back road she hadn’t expected, cutting through the hills beyond the lake. He halted so abruptly that she stumbled, casting her arm away from him like he couldn’t bear to touch her. “You’re a vampire,” he stated, crossing his arms across the breastplate of the strange armor he wore, “you should have heard him in there long before you reached the practice room.”

            Ah, that. “My attention was on Babette,” she replied, echoing his pose, “and, if you haven’t noticed, there is quite a lot of water noise around that bathing section. What about you? No ordinary human would have heard that Khajiit child trying to eavesdrop as he was just now.”

            If her response surprised him, he didn’t show it. All he looked was irritated. “You knew he was there; why did you bring the little bloodsucker in there?”

            She scowled at the term—despite their mutual friendship with Ysmir, he wasn’t even trying to be polite. He hadn’t answered her question, either, which made her wonder briefly if he was being deliberately insulting to distract her. “If I had asked him to leave he would have hovered around, trying to see her. Since he was already there, I thought letting him get a good enough glimpse to see she still had all her limbs wouldn’t be a bad thing and decided to just take her through. I didn’t intend to let them exchange anything but a couple of words, but…well. The argument they had took me a little by surprise.”

            He looked conflicted, “They argued?”

            Serana nodded, feeling bad for both of them. “Babette…I don’t think she’s used to people caring about her well-being. Aventus does and…and he told her so. And she told him that he shouldn’t. Rather emphatically. He knows exactly where she stands now, but…I think he got under her skin. It might not be a bad thing. Maybe he can convince her to call the Dark Brotherhood off Ysmir, somehow.”

            Vilkas snorted. “You’re old enough not to be that naïve,” he scolded her, and she glared at him.

            “The assassins have canceled contracts in the past,” she informed him tartly, hand on her hips as she fumed. “They are perfectly capable of doing so, if given the right motivation.”

            “And what would that be?” he asked scathingly. “Money? A counter-contract? A direct decree from Sithis that he doesn’t want the Dragonborn in his realm?”

            “Well, that last would certainly work, but as to the others I don’t know,” she admitted. “They probably would have called off the contract if she had joined them like their leader wanted—”

            “What?” he yelped, eyes wide.

            “You didn’t know?” Serana asked, smiling sweetly, “After Ysmir helped Aventus, the Dark Brotherhood kidnapped her. She woke up in a shack and was given a choice of three people to kill. Their leader said she owed them a death, and one of those people had a contract on him. They wouldn’t give her the key to the door until she did so.”

            “She killed for them?” Vilkas asked, sounding like he desperately wanted to hear otherwise. Like most warriors, he found the way assassins killed dishonorable.

            Serana chuckled, “She Shouted the door off its hinges and said right to their leader that no one tells her what to do.”

            He relaxed marginally, “That sounds like Ysmir,” he admitted, somewhat wryly.

            “Now, can I go back to the house or do you want to interrogate me some more?” she asked, watching his eyes turn to flint again as he remembered who and what he was talking to.

            Before he could answer a howl broke the still air, sending the birds into stunned, frightened silence and making them both jump as a thrill of atavistic terror shot down Serana’s spine. “What in Oblivion was that?” she breathed, eyes wide.

            Vilkas took off running toward the sound like his life depended on it. After a moment’s hesitation, the vampire followed.

            A bridge crossed the road ahead, the ground beneath it littered with small boulders in what was obviously a bandit trap. There were no bandits now, but there were nearly two dozen men fighting a creature she had heard of, but never seen.

            Standing close to seven feet tall, the werewolf was as frightening as she could wish, with thick, dark fur and tightly corded muscles that stood out starkly under its blue-black skin. In stature it reminded her strongly of a gargoyle, but no gargoyle had a muzzle filled with long, jagged teeth that glittered with saliva and blood, and eyes that shone with intelligence as well as malice.

            The werewolf roared in rage as it swung at the fighters surrounding it, but it was obvious that it was going to be overwhelmed. Dark red blood already oozed from half a dozen wounds that she could see, and most of the beast was obscured from her. Archers stood back and fired at the exposed head that rose above those of their fellows, and the creature was struck time and again, staggering this way and that as it lashed out at those around it with massive swipes from its arms.

            She expected Vilkas to stop, seeing the situation well in hand, or to join in the killing of the creature. He did neither. With a roar of his own he waded in, drawing the two-handed sword and wielding it with deadly efficiency at not the werewolf, but those attacking it.

            “That armor: It’s another one!” someone yelled.

            The wolf fell it its knees as Vilkas interposed himself between it and the dozen or so fighters left. “Come at me,” he growled, baring his teeth just as the wolf had done.

            They needed no further invitation. Serana watched in incredulous silence as he fought, preventing so much as a single blow to fall on the downed creature, though many tried to get passed him to finish it once and for all. It was taking a toll, though, since most of his focus was on defense. They were clearly outmatched, but he was clearly outnumbered.

            The vampire shook off her paralysis and launched an ice spike at a man just as his sword began to descend toward the prone beast, throwing him off-balance. The wolf swung its paw and eviscerated him right through his leather armor.

            Summoning a draining spell in both hands, she aimed it at the body of attackers, syphoning their stamina and life force, focusing all her attention in catching everyone in the group with the spell, but not Vilkas. He glanced at her, sheer astonishment in his eyes, which she chose to ignore.

            The werewolf grunted and curled in on itself, shrinking suddenly as tuffs of fur fell onto the road around it. The sickening sound of bones crackling filled the air, along with the ring of sword on sword, and the naked form of a woman took shape where the werewolf had been. A familiar woman with red-brown hair and piercing grey eyes, who looked up at her with a slightly pained but approving expression.

            A slight scuffing noise echoed from behind the vampire, breaking her concentration.

            Serana gasped as a blade pierced her back, right beside her spine under her rib cage. Red-hot pain shot through her, blurring her vision and making her hiss. “Die, vampire,” the man behind her spat.

            Aela the Huntress ripped a bow from the dead man beside her, whirled, and put an arrow through the man’s neck before he could finish angling the blade toward her heart. The sword was ripped from her as he fell, drawing a ragged yell from her, and she collapsed next to him, jerking the arrow from his neck and replacing it with her fangs before his heart could stop bleeding.

            Hot, metallic liquid shot into her mouth with every faltering beat of his heart, giving her strength as his waned, and speeding the healing of the wound he had inflicted. She hoped the Companions could handle things without her for a few minutes.

.

* * *

.

            Vilkas kicked the dying Silver Hand off his sword and whirled, but no further attacks were forthcoming. “Easy, Vil,” Aela said, still huddled on the ground. Her wounds were healing, slowly, painfully slowly, but he could still watch their progress. Dammed silver blades. He glanced up the road to see the vampire crouched beside her attacker, face buried in his neck. At the moment, he couldn’t even summon up the disgust such a sight should evoke. She had helped. She might have saved them.

            “If she hadn’t been here…”Aela mused, watching the scene with somewhat morbid fascination.

            “Where did they all come from?” Vilkas asked, glancing around him. “Were they going to attack the house?” The thought filled him with dread. If their presence had brought danger to Ysmir and the children…

            The Huntress shook her head, blood-matted auburn hair swinging. “I don’t think so. They seemed quite surprised to see me, at least. It seemed like they were marching out. I thought there were only five or six of them, but the rest caught up when I was about to feed.”

            Without another word Vilkas began searching the bodies.

            “Are you alright?” Serana asked the downed woman, stopping a little distance away. She stood straight, looking like she had never been wounded. Blood smeared down her front, and her eyes glowed a bit more brightly than before. Swiftly dropping to her knees, she started healing the Companion’s wounds without being asked.

            “Thanks to you,” Aela replied. “So, to get this out of the way; yes, we’re werewolves.”

            The vampire’s eyebrows shot up. “All of you?”

            “We three,” Aela corrected.

            Serana darted a glare at Vilkas that should have coated his armor with frost, “And you were giving _me_ a hard time?”

            Aela chuckled.

            Vil ignored both of them, approaching the one Serana had drained reluctantly. Riffling through his belt pouch, the Companion finally found what he was looking for. “They were headed to a larger camp of Silver Hand,” Vilkas told them, eyes scanning the contents. “Their rout just happened to come by here; they weren’t here looking for us. They’re…” he trailed off, eye widening in horror.

            “They’re what, Vil?” Aela asked, staring apprehensively as the vampire helped her to her feet.

            He looked up, mind numb with shock, “They’re going to attack Jorrvaskr.”

            “Who?” Serana asked, looking from one aghast Companion to the other.

            “We—we have to get back,” Aela stammered, grimacing as she moved bruised muscles and unhealed wounds. “We have to be there to defend them.”

            Vil pinned Serana with a searching look. “Do you think you, Lydia, Argis, and Inigo can hold the house until then?” he asked.

            “Most assuredly,” she replied, giving him a somewhat amused look. “After all, it’s not like Lydia’s a fainting maiden and Argis and Inigo are a couple of plowhands.”

            Vil moved quickly to their side, scooping a protesting Aela up like a new bride as he began to walk toward the house. “Vam—Serana, do you think you could run ahead and get something to cover Aela? I don’t want the children to see her like this.”

            “Wounded or naked?” the Huntress asked brazenly.

            He gave her a withering look. “Both.”

            Serana nodded, racing off with a speed that took them both somewhat aback.

            “Pretty spry, for a princess,” Aela said after a moment. “I can’t picture Queen Elisif darting off like that.”

            “If there is need, people can surprise you with what they do,” he told her.

            “She’s not a bad person, Vil,” Aela put in, and his eyes flickered to her face briefly to see if she was in earnest. “You could give her the benefit of the doubt.”

            “I don’t see why,” he began, but she lifted one hand and smacked him upside the head.

            “You were quick enough to trust Argis. Both lycanthropy and vampirism are granted by a Daedric Prince—we have no right to judge her.”

            “She’s also a necromancer,” he reminded her, shuddering in revulsion.

            “And werewolves are essentially cannibals, if you want to get down to cases,” she replied frankly. “Ysmir trusts her.”

            “Ysmir is reckless beyond belief,” he exploded. “She doesn’t always think through what her actions will cause, unless they are planned well in advance. She let that little vampire go when they first met, and now look where that has gotten everyone! We’re keeping an assassin in the house, we had to bring in another vampire to babysit her, and Aventus is mooning around like a lovesick bard!”

            “He’s not mooning around,” Aela corrected him gently. “In fact, he’s being rather over-diligent in his chores. And if he were trying to be a bard someone would have shot him by now. Probably me.”

            Vilkas just growled.

            “Now, we have to leave as soon as possible,” she continued, getting back to what was, for her, the important subject. “The message didn’t say where the base was?”

            “No,” he groused, “it just said ‘headquarters.’”

            “So we don’t know where they were headed, or how long it would have taken them to get there. We need to get back to Jorrvaskr and prepare for a siege.”

            He sighed, shaking his head. “I just hope Ysmir forgives us.”

            “No one has discovered Honey-Bee’s abilities yet. Ysmir is just being paranoid,” Aela countered. “She’s done very well here with just her and Lydia in the past. And the children know to barricade themselves in the basement when there’s fighting.”

            “But they don’t do it!” he cried, exasperated.

            “Runa and Aventus will get them down there if there is need,” she replied calmly, mind obviously already on the upcoming battle with the werewolf hunters.

            “And Aventus will probably stick the assassin down there with them,” he said glumly.

            “They aren’t her prey,” the Huntress replied with a shrug. “She would have killed them already, otherwise. And Serana was right—we’re leaving the children with three of the best non-Companion fighters we know.”

            Just then the vampire came back into sight, carrying Aela’s spare set of armor and followed closely by Farkas. The Huntress grinned. “Smart woman.”

            “When do we leave?” were the first words out of his twin’s mouth when they got within earshot.

            “As soon as we’re provisioned,” Vilkas replied. “Tonight.”


	29. The Legacy of Hahnu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>             Turinmar jumped as his door was thrown open with no regard for how hard it was to get hinges set into ancient Nordic architecture. The panicked look on the workman’s face, however, quelled his rising irritation. “Steward! A dragon just landed on the mountain to the north!”

            “What?” he asked, paling. What was a dragon doing here? Did it serve Miraak? Did it want to challenge him? Was it hungry? Gods, he hoped it wasn’t hungry.

            “Oh, come on!” Dorte snapped, rising from the little table she had been writing up material lists at to grab his arm and tug him out the door, upsetting several piles of papers as they went. The Dark Elf began to wish he had taken his niece up on her offer to make him a decent filing system. His new assistant seemed to think everything not immediately useful should be thrown out or used for kindling.

            “Dorte…” he huffed a little in her wake, as the Nord woman was at least a head taller than he and had a correspondingly longer stride, “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Lord Miraak—”

            “Could be visiting Black Marsh for all we know,” she interjected in irritation.

            Turinmar’s lips thinned in anger. “He wouldn’t leave us unprotected!”

            Dorte muttered something angrily as she took to the ramp leading up into the outside edifice of the temple. “Don’t look now, but there’s a dragon on the ridge and no sign of your precious Miraak,” she glared at him with a hint of triumph in her eyes. There was, indeed, a dragon. It gazed down at them as if searching for something, head tilted to the side. Other than that, it didn’t move.

            The Steward had better eyes than her, and his widened in disbelief. “There is a person on that dragon!”

            “What?” she asked, glancing back up at it. Around them, the faithful drew bows, waiting for the beast to attack.

            “It’s too far…” he said, squinting, then “Thank you,” as one of the cultists handed him a spy glass. He wasn’t sure where the man had gotten it, but made a mental note to get himself one. “It’s the Dragonborn. The…uh, you know…other one,” he told her awkwardly.

            “She rides dragons?” Dorte asked skeptically. “I thought she was a dragon slayer, not a dragon rider.”

            “I don’t know of anyone else that could ride one besides Lord Miraak,” he informed her, still watching through the spyglass. “And the, uh, bright red hair seems to cinch it, you know.”

            “What is she doing here?” someone asked him.

            “For right now? Apparently watching,” someone else said, sounding much more amused than the situation warranted. The Dark Elf glanced over at him—it was one of the Skaal workmen. That explained the amusement, anyway. Everything the new Dragonborn did seemed to amuse them.

            “Ah!” Turinmar exclaimed, making them all jump, “There’s Lord Miraak!”

            “What’s he doing?” Dorte demanded, sounding aggravated.

            “Um…talking to her,” the Steward informed them, quite confused. “At least…yes, he’s talking to her. Wait…she’s walking away…he’s talking to the dragon now.”

            Dorte looked from him to the ridge and pretty much summed up what everyone was thinking, “What in Oblivion is going on up there?”

            “I don’t know,” Turinmar told her, closing the spy glass and handing it back to its owner, “Someone get me a horse!”

.

* * *

 .

            “What are you doing here, Ysmir?” Miraak asked, irritated and not bothering to hide it. He had been having a very interesting time putting his Daedric hooks into a Thalmor mage when he had felt a desperate tug, similar to when he was called back to Apocrypha, only coming from his temple. At least now he knew what it felt like when a sizable portion of his followers called upon him, scared out of their wits and begging him to save them.

            “I’m not here for myself, Miraak,” she assured him, her hair streaming out behind her. She looked beautiful in the light of the sun, rather than the washed out, ambient glow of Apocrypha. Not that he was about to tell her that, seeing as she had brought a _dragon_ to his _temple_. Infuriating woman. He had hoped…well, mostly he had thought that perhaps she wanted to talk to him about Darva. Perhaps she had somehow discovered that he had been in contact with the child. He found himself looking forward to the argument that would surely ensue.

            The Dragonborn slid down from her perch behind the head of a massive red dragon and Miraak suppressed a flinch, finally recognizing the beast now that it faced him. “Odahviing,” he said, frowning.

            The former dragon general inclined his head in a respectful greeting, which only served to make Miraak feel even more tense than before. _“Drem yol lok,_ Miraak. It has been many _eruvos_ since we have seen one another.”

            “I believe the last time we met you were trying to kill me,” the First Dragonborn noted, making his voice as wry as possible.

            _“Krosis_. I must tender my apologies. I flew under the _vorliz_ of Alduin then; I have a different purpose now,” Odahviing stated genially. Miraak nodded, impressed despite himself that the great Odahviing, a power even amongst dragons, now apparently served Ysmir. He wondered briefly how she had managed that, since he obviously wasn’t under the influence of Bend Will.

            They both turned to look at Ysmir, who glanced between them with an expression of interest that quickly grew to something like amused outrage. “You make me come all the way here and I’m not allowed to even listen?”

            “You got him to speak with me,” Odahviing replied reasonably, “That was all I wished of you, Dovahkiin. But I told you before; my business is my own.”

            She gave a huff of aggravation, but relented with an air of friendly indulgence, taking Miraak completely by surprise. Not a servant then; a friend. She was friends with a dragon. Unbelievable. “Just…” she gave both of them stern looks, as if they were a pair of recalcitrant little boys rather than a dragon and a four-millennium-old man, “play nice.”

            “I won’t devour him,” they said in unison, then glanced at each other measuringly. Ysmir had the audacity to chuckle. Flying, Miraak surmised, must put her in a rather good mood.  He had never seen her like this, but he thought he liked it. Her face shown with good humor and just a touch of concern, though he supposed it was more for the dragon than for himself. What could Odahviing do to him now, after all?

            “Now,” Miraak said once she was out of earshot and they had moved far enough from the edge of the cliff to not be in sight of the city, crossing his arms over his chest, “What do you want?”

            “Long ago, when we _dov_ were deciding how much of a _hask_ you were, it was rumored you knew the location of the _Staak Kiindah_. Is this so?” Odahviing asked without preamble.

            Miraak was very, very glad he was wearing his mask. His chest tight, he finally asked, “Why?”

            The dragon did not answer immediately, obviously pondering his words. Finally, he said, “When the Birthing Place was destroyed, there were two females within. One who was a mate wishes to know the grave of his _silliin.”_ The look Odahviing gave him was censoring, “He should be allowed to mourn her properly. I thought as one who now has a mate, you would be more understanding of the pain of loss than you might have been before.”

            Miraak looked away, his gaze following Ysmir’s footprints in the snow. He switched to the Dragon Language, realizing she would be listening, no matter what this dragon thought. To his knowledge, Ysmir wasn’t even as versed in the Dragon Tongue as Darva was. _“Dovahkiinne_ are not dragons, Odahviing; our joining is different.”

            “Perhaps not as different as you would think,” the dragon replied, and Miraak stomped down hard on the irritation he felt at the amusement threaded through that simple sentence.

            A change of subject was in order. “It is interesting that such a mate would still be around, knowing who it was that destroyed the Birthing Place.”

            Odahviing hung his head. “We know now the great betrayal of Alduin’s rage, Miraak. It was at Kyne’s First Daughter’s insistence that Paarthurnax first taught our human followers the Voice. We knew this angered Alduin, and that this began the rift between brothers, but we did not know how deep that wedge was driven. When the Dovahkiin destroyed Alduin, Paarthurnax told us of the boy who escaped the slaughter and revealed the trickery to him. The humans that slaughtered Hahnu and her birthing sister bore the mark of the World Eater.”

            He closed his eyes. Darva hadn’t gotten to that part of the story yet. He hadn’t been able to write it. Strange, that something that happened so long ago should be able to affect him so much still, when the memory of realizing his own mother’s death was nothing but a vague, hollow ache cushioned by the long years between then and now. “It was my knowledge that Paarthurnax disbelieved the boy’s story. He told the other dragons he had killed him, actually.”

            “It was later proven to be true,” Odahviing said frankly. “Alduin admitted as much when it was revealed Paarthurnax had been teaching others than the Priests how to use the Voice. He had hoped that without Hahnu’s influence Paarthurnax would recant his pupils. Instead, it pushed him into further betrayal.”

            “As if someone like Hahnu could be forgotten so quickly,” Miraak scoffed, then realized he had spoken his pain aloud.

            “You knew her,” Odahviing stated, eyes as round as a dragon’s could get.

            There was no harm in him knowing now, Miraak supposed. It could not be used to hurt either of them, anymore. He planted his feet and faced the Red Dragon fully. “Lovaasunslaadhahnu first taught me the use of the Voice.”

            Odahviing’s head reared up in utter denial, rising over the man with eyes pinning. “It is not feasible! Kyne’s First Daughter wished nothing but peace between all beings; you betrayed us for your own whims. She would never have taken such a hateful creature as pupil!”

            Miraak’s smile was grim. “I was not always the Allegiance Guide, Odahviing. My hate had time to grow as I did.”

            “What are you two talking about?” Ysmir interjected as she raced up, watching Odahviing with wide eyes as he mantled above them, then casting Miraak an accusing glare.

            “You really need to learn the Dragon Tongue if you insist on playing with them, Ysmir. Your _friend_ asked about the past,” Miraak told her scornfully, “It is not my fault he did not like what he discovered.”

            “You ass—what did you say to him?” she demanded, hands curling into fists.

            “The truth,” he bit off, tired of her attitude. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Ysmir, but dragons have a bit of trouble taking the truth when it doesn’t suit them.”

            “Reminds me of someone else!” she shot back, then looked back up at Odahviing. “Calm down!”

            “You’re one to talk!” he fumed, gesturing to her and the enraged _dovah._ She gave him an incredulous, questioning look, violet eyes wide. “Dragons enslaved humans, Ysmir. _Enslaved_. For hundreds of years. They were terrible, cruel overlords, and their priests were even worse. They didn’t even want to rule personally; they simply thought humanity too beneath them and too stupid to be allowed free reign over themselves and dominated us. Played us against each other and fattened themselves on the resulting wars, using them to keep our numbers from growing out of control. Men, Elves; it didn’t matter! If it lived on land it was within their dominion. They chose a small group of their most faithful and let them control the entire population however they saw fit, so they needn’t sully themselves dealing with us directly!”

            “Says one of that group!” she reminded him, scowling.

            “I took power the only way there was!” he informed her, nearly spitting with rage. He ripped his mask off to stare down at her. “I manipulated, bribed, and killed my way into their ranks, and then I started taking them out like the trash they were!”

            Ysmir’s face went blank, and she actually took a step back, eyes wide, skin pale. He advanced on her, unable to stem the flow of words that had remained unspoken long enough. “I wanted to destroy them,” he hissed down at her, “and I would not let anything stand in my way, even a devil’s bargain with Hermaeus Mora.”

            “You’re still planning to,” she whispered, horrified.

            Miraak scoffed. “If being trapped in Apocrypha taught me anything, Ysmir, it was that the dragons weren’t completely wrong; man and mer are too stupid to rule themselves. Four millennia, and all I saw, all I read, was war and machinations equal to anything under the Dragon Rule. The Akaviri hunted the dragons to damned near extinction, and yet that behavior continued. This world isn’t capable of peace, Ysmir. Not without someone ensuring it.”

            _“In order to subdue this chaotic world, to set things right, I must return to this world in full.”_ It was his first slip with her, when she had glared at him on the side of a mountain much like where they now stood, as he stole the soul of a dragon she had slain. He could see the memory flit across her strangely colored eyes. “You really meant it,” she breathed. “Miraak, that’s insane! You can’t mean to take over Tamriel!”

            His smile was hardly reassuring; he didn’t mean it to be. “I have all of time now, Ysmir. I’ll do what I have to.”

_“YOL TOR SHUL!”_

            Miraak pulled Ysmir to him, sheltering her against his chest as he placed himself between her and the enraged dragon by sheer instinct, though she hardly needed it. She was shaking. He had never known anything to make her tremble before. He bent and kissed her, lightly, almost mocking, too quick for her to even respond. Oh, how he wanted to do so much more than that…“You should take your pet home; he’s making quite a lot of noise, and there are children below.”

            She swallowed. Licked her lips. “Miraak…your eyes…”

            He could see them reflected in hers. It didn’t trouble him. He turned, pushing her further behind him. _“Gol Ha Dov!”_

            “No!” Ysmir shrieked, clutching his arm.

            He saw the Shout take Odahviing, felt the dragon fight it with his formidable will. Felt him losing. Ysmir knew as well as he did how easy it would be for him now to take the soul of the Red Dragon without that worthy even being able to put up a fight.

            “You bastard!” she yelled, catching flame as she beat against his chest, too upset and fearful to even summon a spell. Miraak shook his head, lifting her bodily and placing her on Odahviing’s neck. She froze as surely as if he had used Ice Form, staring down at him with astonishment, wondering what he was thinking.

            He patted Odahviing’s head, glancing at the glassy eyes. All the _dovah’s_ concentration was turned inward, fighting his _thu’um_. This one would not respond while under control, not meekly do as he was bid. He was much too strong for that. While his mind rebelled, however, his body could not help but obey. “When he comes to, tell him it’s near Bonestrewn Crest. Far be it for me to keep someone from the grave of their beloved,” he finished bitterly. Before she could respond, he looked directly at the dragon. Rage whirled in those eyes behind the dullness of his control. “Take her home.”

            Ysmir grabbed the ridge before her as the dragon launched himself into the air, thoughts shielded, even from him. He watched them go, her hair shining like Odahviing’s scales in the late afternoon sunlight. He watched long after she was gone, as the stars began to show themselves, winking in and out as if they had shutters over them, moving in the brisk mountain wind.

            “What took you so long?” he asked, turning to watch his Steward clamber up the rise behind him, shivering and slipping in the snow.

            Turinmar froze for a moment as he saw his lord unmasked, but it was not a completely new sight for him, although Miraak thought he had a few new scales since the last time he had gone bare-faced before the Dunmer. “My horse didn’t like the smell of brimstone. Or dragon,” he confided, dusting his hands off on his trousers. “Lord Miraak…your eyes are…black.”

            “I know,” he replied, looking back over his city, hands clasped calmly behind his back.

            “You let the dragon go,” Turinmar observed, swallowing a little. When Miraak glanced back at him, one eyebrow raised, the Dunmer added, “People are going to ask me why, you know.”

            “It belongs to her,” Miraak replied with deceptive carelessness. “I wouldn’t kill your pet dog, why should I kill her pet dragon?”

            “So you…let it go because…she would be upset?” the Dark Elf frowned, sounding confused.

            Miraak glared at him, “I let him go because he is no threat to me.”

            “But he could be, you know,” Turinmar pointed out. “She could be.”

            “Turinmar…” Miraak said lowly, starlight reflecting off his eyes, black from lid to lid, “I like you. I’d even go so far as to say that you’re my favorite follower, but irritating me is still bad for your health.”

            The Dark Elf gulped. “Of course, sire.”

            “Now, this little venture interrupted other business. There’s a Thalmor in Winterhold begging for my attention,” he said, smile full of malevolence. He vanished in a swirl of blackness that smelled of old parchment and ink.

.

* * *

. 

            Turinmar sighed and began trudging back down the hill, thinking furiously. By the time he got back to his horse, and then back to the temple, he had many more questions than answers. That had never bothered him before. Now, though, he had others to appease. The most pushy of them was just ahead, leaning like a grumpy orc against the outermost post of the temple.

            “Well?” Dorte asked archly, as he knew she would. Turinmar sighed and she scowled. “What did the Dragonborn want?”

            “I don’t know,” he replied wearily.

            “What do you mean, you ‘don’t know?’” she demanded.

            “I don’t know what was happening. Supposedly the Dragonborn called upon Lord Miraak for his wisdom,” he temporized.

            Dorte snorted, “I raised one niece and half a dozen apprentices; I know when someone’s trying to pull the wool over my eyes, elf.”

            “Then know that I’m telling the truth when I say that I don’t know why that woman came to call,” he said tiredly. “But I would appreciate it if you didn’t spread that around once I come up with an answer for everyone else.”

            “Perhaps Dragonborn see each other socially,” she suggested flippantly. “He doesn’t show up for nearly anything else, but he and the great hero of the age are two of a kind! Better than us little people with our mundane little problems like food and shelter!” she ranted, tossing her hands up.

            She was only goading him, but Turinmar paused, thoughts whirling. They were two of a kind. Not exactly, but in a sense. He had ordered that the attempts on her life end, then let her go unpunished after she sacked the temple and killed a number of his followers. He had let her go today, after bringing a dragon here. Had even let the dragon go, when he could have taken its soul and easily left the Dragonborn to find her own way home.

            “Are you listening?” Dorte snapped, and he realized she had been ranting at him for some time.

            “No,” he told her absently, then almost smiled when her face turned red in annoyance. “Dorte, can you supervise the building for a few weeks?”

            She paused mid-breath as whatever tirade she was about to lay upon him completely deflated. “Yes. Why?”

            “Lord Miraak’s been pressuring me to take better care of myself, you know. I think I’ll go see my niece.”

            The stocky Nord frowned. “This is very sudden, Turinmar.”

            “Perhaps, but if I can convince her to come back this time, my life will be much easier,” he revealed with a smile. “She’s an expert at organization, you know, and has been training as a Healer…we could certainly use her.”

            “That’s true,” she admitted. “Healers are one group that haven’t been flocking to Miraak’s siren song. Probably because they’re too sensible to fall for it.”

            He forced a happy expression on his face, made himself relax. “Thanks, Dorte. I’ll be back before next moon.” Going back into his office, he was relieved when she didn’t follow him. Stacking the piles she had knocked over earlier, he started making his plans. First, to get to Windhelm. From there, he needed to find out everything he could about this other Dragonborn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the hiatus on this story. It is entirely due to my forgetfulness.
> 
> Art is mine from a few years ago. When I get my tablet up and running again I think I'll redo it...


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